


The Pain of Kindness

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AFABbucky, Agender Character, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-24 11:40:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1603838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The KGB, HYDRA, S.H.I.E.L.D. As it turned out were all the same thing and Natasha Romanov still doesn't trust herself.</p><p>Bucky Barnes couldn't remember if she was a soldier, lover, or friend. Maybe it was better that way.</p><p>Steve Rogers was so tired. He had to be strong enough to pick up Bucky's pieces and to carry them both now though.</p><p>Sam Wilson had been to war and lost too much. But this battle was one where he might have something to win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Wolves of Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I should preface this by saying that the original fic was supposed to be for the Marvel Harlequin challenge. But this became way too angsty and started taking me in different directions after I saw The Winter Soldier. The movie that gave the whole world Bucky Barnes feels. 
> 
> That's why the vampire and werewolf things are in there and became harder and harder for me to excise so I'm basically using supernatural beings as stand ins for mutants in the MCU. (haha say the m word in Age of Ultron and Disney owes 20th Century Fox 40 million dollars) Although I really like the idea of Natasha as a dampyr (Balkan half-vampyr) regardless of context whoops... 
> 
> Before each chapter I'll have warnings because although there is fluff this is a violent, gory, angst filled roller coaster through the broken psyches of Natasha and Bucky. And probably the rest of the Avengers because all our favs are immensely messed up. I would like to thank my lovely beta sparksflyupward as well. She rocks and had been super patient with my ass. And if you're at all interested in how I make all those ships work you should tune it. 
> 
> Final note I am also chicagoartnerd on tumblr so feel free to follow for all of the MCU feels.

**_The Eastern Alps, Near Wechsel Pass, Austrian Styria, May 5th 1945_ **

 

The ground vibrated and thumped thickly beneath her shoulder blades, the loud pops of claymores in the air shook her lungs. Smoke and orange fire were reflected everywhere over the thin crust of of newly fallen snow so dry it was like spun glass.

Steve had made it. He was still clinging to that train.

She hadn’t.

It was like a newsreel repeated over and over in her head to the beat of her heart. It had hurt falling down a mountainside, probably never felt good, but having her arm ripped off was fucking awful. If she wasn’t losing so much blood she would have wondered how she had survived the fall to be laying there dying in the snow.

With each pump more of her strength and blood bounced and spurted across the ground soaking it a dangerous crimson. If her vision stopped blurring she could have watched the small fingers of steam hiss from where her blood met the air and snow.

There was no pain.

Not unless she moved to sit up or to crawl from the ditch she had fallen into.

Bucky Barnes didn’t move. Logically she should have been ripping off part of her heavy navy jacket to tie a tourniquet of some sort with her good arm. But right now it didn’t seem important.

Everything was soft and oddly warm around the edges. It couldn’t have been warmer than -10 celsius and yet if felt like she was wrapped in her down comforter, back home in New York City, Steve shivering despite the fact that she was wrapped around him. Steve. He was alright. And he wasn’t so small any more.

A round of machine gun fire cut through her haze and then everything was too close and too loud. She gasped for air as a thick soled boot came down on her chest.

“Was haben wir hier? Es ist eine hübsche vogel. Mit nur einem flügel.”

She couldn’t catch enough of a breath to spit at him, her eyes fluttered open to view the black masked face of a HYDRA foot soldier. There was pain now and it was screaming up from where her left hand used to be, up her neck to burn and claw at her temples and the backs of her eyes.

The soldier drew his vaporizer rifle from the sling across his back and pointed it at her. A wounded part of her wanted to close her eyes and let the strange blue light dissolve her but she held his gaze violently instead. Teeth bared and snarling into the black void of the barrel.

Unfortunately she was saved that particular mercy.

A motorcycle with a sidecar rolled up next to them. Then a small man hopped out and practically stumbled down into the snow crusted ditch with them.

“Wait! Wait! This one is perfect for a little experiment I have been wanting to try.”

The HYDRA soldier removed his boot after kicking her viciously in the side. Her first reaction was to curl into it but the slightest wheeze moved her shattered stump and induced red ringed agony.

“How is officer Hitzig doing by the way?”

Arnim Zola wasn’t looking at the soldier but instead his small vole-like face was grinning maliciously down at her.

“It took ten agents and seven doses of horse tranquilizers to put him down Herr Doktor. But not before ample saliva, blood, and semen samples were taken.”

They were speaking English for her benefit she assumed but she had no idea what they were talking about. Words were becoming harder and harder to grasp through the warm haze of pain and exsanguination that she was drifting through.

Zola said something along the lines of excellent job before instructing the soldier to drag her down the road and put her in the covered truck waiting there. When he did she blacked out into the fuzzy blood lined pink behind her eyelids. There was nothing but flashes after that. Flashes metal, light, and unimaginable cold.

For a long time.

 

**_DreamHack, Elmia Convention and Exhibition Center, Jönköping, Sweden, June 18th 2011_ **

 

Rows and rows of illuminated screens lit up the massive thawed hockey rink and continued on into the convention center proper in a procession of glowing lights. The majority were of Apple make but Stark tech was definitely making a dent in their market stranglehold.

Natasha Romanoff wasn’t at DreamHack to admire the most recent advances in handheld and laptop devices for gaming though. There were rumblings that Sweden’s particularly cavalier attitude towards net neutrality had made it a den for hackers more proactive in their methods of cyber crime. The particular hacker she was looking for was one Johannes Culiver otherwise known as “Geppetto” in hackerspace forums.

From what S.H.I.E.L.D. could gather he was not only good at building sophisticated malware and worms used for covering his tracks but also physical devices that had the ability to hack a person’s mind. That was really what they had a vested interest in stopping, or at least commandeering for their own research and development purposes.

Her mission was to neutralize Culiver and turn him over to S.H.I.E.L.D. or find a way to siphon off his R&D files if elimination proved inevitable.

She had done her best to look like a twenty-something with a love of tech and techies. Although the number of women at DreamHack had steadily increased every year since its inception, she was still a minority in the crowd. It made her visible in a way she could combat with her appearance. A low ponytail, turtle rim glasses, and an Uhura hoodie offered more camoflauge than her usual black tactical suit.

Shouting and laughter could be heard along with the sounds of digitized gunfire and grenades being released to her left. A large tournament of “Counter Strike 1.6” was being played raucously. It sounded more like a raging frat party than one of the largest LAN gatherings on earth.

And just like a kegger some people were having more fun than others.

Towards the back of the crowd a figure drew her eye. She was tall and blonde like many of the other Scandinavian people there. The difference being that she was extremely muscular, dressed in a light blue pantsuit and high pearlescent white platform heels, versus messy buns, pullovers, and loose fitting slacks. And she wasn’t laughing with the other people in the crowd.

Nat followed her steely gray gaze and her eyes landed on the mess of hair and flannel that was one Chris Owens, Culiver’s best friend and sometimes collaborator. He was the scowling woman’s target it seemed. Well two could definitely play that unwashed hacker boy game.

She effortlessly sifted through and assessed the crowd, skimming over those present and quickly analyzing their facial features and expressions.

One more muscular person was standing close by not laughing and hooting along with the rest of the crowd observing the team battles. There was also an all too familiar ozone tang to the air; the smell of electricity and scorched earth. Someone nearby had Asgardian or Asgardian based tech.

She whipped out her smart phone and texted in an update to Coulson while looking bored. Then started to slowly wind her way through the crowd closer and closer to Owens. Nat made it as close as his massive multi-screen computer terminal before people started to push back against her movement. There was a cry of anguish from the crowd as his character was killed and sent back to re-spawn. The his four teammates were also dying before reaching the enemy base. The game looked to be about over and she saw her chance.

“They are totally cheating by shooting at you while you’re in freeze time.”

Owens jumped and turned to face the sweetly mock-angry voice that came from over his left shoulder. That look was all she needed to bury her will instantly into his brain.

It was easy after that to seduce him away from his computers and get him to lead her to Culiver. She would have used her human charms to do it but she didn’t have the time. Nerd boys were harder to finagle than most people suspected. They had trouble believing that a woman would be interested in them. That’s what happened when there was so much internalised hatred in a person. So courting them for intel and otherwise took more time than she had on hand right now.  
Two people of probably superhuman strength were watching him and now her as they left the rink’s floor.

They both started to follow the pair across the convention center as Owens dumbly led her towards her target like a magnet to a meteorite. She linked her arm with his good naturedly and pressed him to walk faster. He led her outside of the repurposed hockey rink towards the conference rooms in the main convention hall. Nat tried and failed several times to lose their tail in one of the large crowds of loud teenagers.

They ducked up a flight of laminated concrete stairs, taking them two at a time. Owens led her down a dizzyingly red-checkered carpeted hallway into a pristine white room. The floor to ceiling windows all along the back wall overlooking lake Vättern filled the whole room with bright natural light. Three people were sitting around a round conference table drinking and eating sandwiches. One of them stood up immediately while the other two looked up in surprise.

Culiver remained seated although he looked stunned. Natasha quickly took down Owens with a swift kick to the back of his right knee. Then a zap from the electrodes on her finger tips that were fed into the battery packs hiding around her waist under her hoodie. The person who stood pounced at her and started to physically shift into something larger and covered in hair.

She didn’t need to know what it was to know what would take it down.

Nat rolled out of the trajectory of of its jump and pulled out her baretta from her ankle holster while steadying herself into a crouch. The bullets were packed with aconite and digitalis and she shot two into its chest and one into its head. The creature went down with a gurgling snarl and she sprang up to point her gun at the other man seated next to Culiver, who raised his hands as she pointed the gun from the man next to him towards his face.

“Now I don’t know who you are or what this is about but I’m sure we can—”

He never got to finish that inane and pointless train of thought because before she could blink the entire top of his head was gone.

Bone, brain, and blood were slapping across the table and onto her hoodie. She tried not to lick her lips as blood and brain matter struck her face. Instead focusing out the hole in the spider webbed glass of the window that looked out onto the roof of the hockey stadium. There was the brief flash of someone dismantling a rifle scope and then a blur of black movement as the sniper exited the roof.

They either had his research schematics already or were going to get them now that he was dead. Her eyes snapped back from the distance to focus on Owens’ still prone body on the floor. He was still half beneath the dead body of the would-be shapeshifting bodyguard.

She didn’t even bother with the man who was staring in shock at the missing parts of Culiver’s head and instead picked Owens off the ground with one hand and shook him. He jolted awake and that was all the opening her enthralling ability needed. She knew her eyes turned the same red as all the blood in the conference room as she spoke.

“Where does Culiver keep his back up drives, hard copies, or cloud storage? Where is his research data located?”

Owens’ pupils dilated so that his eyes were almost black as he mumbled back sweetly.

“He has a geocache he uses. The coordinates are on a flash drive in my hotel room.”

“What is your hotel name and room number?”

“The Hotel Savoy room 508. Just take the Huskvarnavägen.”

She dropped him with a muffled thud and reached into her pocket to toss a couple 100 konar notes at the now hyperventilating, blood splattered man across the table.

“Here. For your dry cleaning.”

Then she was tearing down the disorienting hall to the staircase onto the main floor. Natasha shrugged off her blood splattered Star Trek hoodie into the nearest trashcan after cleaning her face with it. Her glasses and hair tie were also discarded leaving her in a black t-shirt and her black jeans. She strode out of the convention center while dialing Coulson.

“I’m in pursuit of an enemy agent. Someone else wants Culiver’s research and they already killed him for it. Get aerial support on my position I might need back up because we are dealing with snipers here.”

“Confirmed; aerial is on their way. And I’m curious as to where you found that Trek hoodie? I’ve never seen an official one with Uhura on it before.”

Nat was pretty sure that S.H.I.E.L.D’s satellite imaging wasn’t quite good enough for him to pick up her eye roll at that but maybe he did because he responded to her silence anyway.

“If I didn’t know better I would say you were a closet nerd agent Romanoff.”

That she did respond to verbally.

“Now Phil, projecting is usually a sign of insecurity but I know for a fact you’re an out and proud geek, so what’s the deal?”

She heard him snort on the other end before he signed off.

It was fast enough to dig through her side pack and pull out her leather jacket. Nat swung a leg over her Z800 matte black Kawasaki motorcycle and peeled out of the convention center parking lot. Whoever else was after Culiver’s files already had a several minute head start on her if she wasn’t already too late. If she had known about the geocache she would have tried to toss Owen’s room before she even infiltrated DreamHack.

There was very little traffic along the Vättern and the deep pristine blue of the lake whirred by on her right. She had hangers on though. Two particularly tall women on silver bikes were following her several car lengths behind. Cranking the throttle, she shot down the road into the downtown area, in and around several wide side streets.

The tail had either been lost or had disappeared because when she parked across from the Hotel Savoy they were gone. She strode into the lobby and headed straight for the elevators. Owen’s room was one of the corner suites. It was easy to locate and when she found it she fried the electric door lock with the electrodes still wired into her now visibly gloved hands.

Nat’s gun was drawn as the door swung in giving her some cover but thankfully she didn’t need it; the modern all monochrome room was empty. The room itself didn’t look any more trashed than it would have from two twenty six year old hackers living in it. Nat kept her gun drawn just in case.

After she cleared the bathroom and side living room she started looking for the thumb drive. It was black, about the size of her pinky finger nail, and square. It was also still sticking out of the side of Culiver’s computer. She quickly plugged in one of S.H.I.E.L.D’s sweeper drives and gleaned very little from the laptop. It had been wiped regularly.

The flash drive, on the other hand, had just a single set of longitude and latitude coordinates. They revealed themselves to be to the north of downtown at the airstrip by the lake. She pocketed the thumb drive and made her way back downstairs to her bike. When she put on her helmet she once again checked in with Coulson.

“I uploaded everything that was on Culiver’s computer at the hotel to our databases but there wasn’t much. Owens said all of his research files would be on a flash drive at the geocache I’m heading to. I also uplinked the coordinates so aerial should get there before I do.”

“We’ve got more than one set of eyes on you. Keep me posted. Coulson out.”

She kept glancing over her shoulder as the wind whipped viciously across her body to see if her Norse entourage had returned but there was no sign of them. Her instincts were telling her that they weren’t gone and that the sniper who had taken out Culiver was probably not working with them either.

Natasha should have checked in with Coulson and relayed her suspicions but instead she hugged onto the frame of her bike and pushed it as fast as it would go north towards the landing strip.

It was such a small strip that there wasn’t much of a parking lot. Instead she dropped her bike off near a low cow fence around the south perimeter. Using her phone to ping the exact coordinates she headed across the field towards the lakeside end of the landing strip. The whole area was flat and covered in ankle deep swaying grass.

The winter had been mild so far and nothing much had died yet. There hadn’t even been a layer of frost over everything. It should have been easy to see the figure that materialized out of her right peripheral vision coming, but she was barely fast enough to brace for being flung about fifteen feet to the left. It would have hurt a lot more if she hadn’t rolled with it across the soft ground.

Springing to her feet she kept the momentum of being thrown going and swung around out of the way of the charging black clad figure. They jerked around to face her but there was no mouth or eyes to snag with her thrall ability. Just the black bug-like reflection from goggles and a vented face mask.

The figure was about six inches taller than she was and only slightly more muscular in their upper body. Which was surprising as she had expected something that could throw her like a paper plane to be much bigger and bulkier. They briefly sized each other up in the span of a breath and then she was on the attack.

Nat crouched and kicked out for the assassin’s knee caps then hooked their closest leg around her own to try and flip them. If she could pin them, then an electric shock from her gloves would probably be enough to take them down. At least long enough to put a aconite bullet through their head.

The figure didn’t fall though and instead she found herself being grabbed by her shoulder and neck and flung to the ground before them. Mid-air she managed to get her feet under herself and use the momentum of the toss to flip the sniper over her shoulder onto their head face first.

They let out a surprised grunt as she slipped her hands up their sides and delivered several thousands volts of electricity into the leather clad chest. When they convulsed and then went still she stood up and flipped open her phone which let out a high pitched whine. The geocache was right next to them and they must have been fighting over it the whole time. She left the prone figure and used her fingers to dig in the dirt where the phone was beeping the loudest.

The pads of her gloves scratched something that wasn’t dirt and grass. Nat frantically scraped away a layer of turf to reveal the outline of an old meter long olive green Swiss Army strong box. Working efficiently she managed to unearth it and open the slightly rusted two pronged lock. Inside were several items but the one she was looking for was a small blue thumbdrive in a plastic sandwich bag. Her fingers closed around it as a heavy, metal enforced fist hit her once, then like lightning, twice in both her kidneys.

Hissing in pain she dropped to her knees just in time to see two people coming towards her over the upturned lid of the strong box. The flash of blue slowed down as her eyes blew wide and rust red, things could no longer keep up with her. She moved fast enough to climb into the shallow, coffin-like, hole left by the box and flip it up as a shield. The irony didn't escape her.

The impact shattered it into flimsy metal splinters but none of them embedded themselves in her skin, only grazed her arms protecting her head. The world moved back at its normal pace as the assassin behind her howled in pain and rage.

She turned and watched as it shifted forms, the mask and goggles fell away as well as the under armor sleeves of its vest which were shredded. It was halfway between man, beast, and machine covered in long chestnut fur the same color as the ponytail it had before changing. The thick muscles of its neck and arms bulged grotesquely from its leather vest. Except for its left arm. It appeared to be some sort of cybernetic prosthetic and it gleamed wickedly like a freshly polished sword. There was only one werewolf assassin with an arm like that.

She hadn’t believed those memories till that moment. Now she knew that she was real. It was a silly comfort that at least that much had been real.

The werewolf howled as the metal shrapnel worked its way out of its fur covered snout, which was now matted with blood, onto the ground. She took that as her signal to scramble out of the hole.

Two more shots of blue energy destroyed where she had been hiding only a split second later. Her hands found her pistols and she was firing at the two women with vaporizer rifles. It was probably bad form to bring a semi-automatic to a hyper advanced alien tech fight. She had seen something like them in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s munitions bunker after they had been confiscated from HYDRA 75 years ago but never out on a mission.

Something was wrong.

The ground beneath her feet slid jarringly to the right as a giant mound of turf was ripped from the earth and thrust up as barrier to stop the next barrage of nullifying light. The massive hulk of the werewolf was in front of her as the rifle blasted through the dirt and grass and sent it scattering in a halo around them. She was just as strong and precise as she had remembered her being...

Before she could strike out at the werewolf with her palm or heel it was loping off the field with the plastic bag full of her flash drive in its maw. She started to tear off after it but had to duck when she felt the cold dead fingers of blue light shave off several inches of her long red hair.

Then the terrifyingly familiar caress of a rifle muzzle pushing into the back of her neck and that was it.

“Don’t turn around creature. We know your tricks. We will not be so easily dispatched.”

The female voice had the unmistakable lilt of Asgardian inflected English. What the hell were people from Asgard doing here on earth right now, let alone shooting at her? The way things were squared away right now though she would probably never find out. Nat just hoped that the second pair of eyes Coulson was talking about also came with a matching set of missiles. They were going to need the big guns now.

“Where are the files? Johannes said we would find them here.”

If the missiles weren’t on their way she was going to have to stall long enough to distract the gun a fraction above her skin, just a little wiggle room. They were supposed to be here already, damn. Maybe aerial was too distracted by the massive brown werewolf with the robot arm running away to care about her head staying on her shoulders right now. Oh well. She let all the tension drain from her neck and sighed.

“Isn’t that a little dangerous as well? You said you know all the tricks of my kind so you should know the effect our voices can have on other people.”

That was met with a sharpened high heel in her back followed by a kick hard enough to crack two of her ribs and put her face down in the dirt.

“Draugrs have many tricks it’s true. but you’re just a shade. A miserable half thing even worse off than the cursed risen dead.”

“Do not be distracted by it, Skadi. Answer us witch or find yourself missing more than just your soul.”

The one who wasn’t Skadi pushed harder against her cracked ribs and she let out a pain tinged gasp for air. Natasha had to recover but there was no time. If she could break the seal on the emergency serum in her glove then maybe.

Nat slowly curled her fingers into her right palm before muttering.

“Skadi, wasn’t she Jotun in mythology? What is a child of Jotunheim doing taking orders from an Asgardian with a heel fetish?”

It was a gamble but her words were her only weapon unless she broke the glass vial while shoving it into her wrist, which would be messy and painful but would get the job done. She felt it begin to shimmy down the elastic band inside her glove as the one named Skadi gasped and started to say.

“What is she talking about Hilde?”

Hilde cut her off.

“Shoot her. She has a tongue as poisonous as the Trickster’s and it will only tell us lies.”

Skadi made a noise like she was going to argue when the sound of bones cracking and blood spurting filled her senses. It was alien blood but it called to Nat nonetheless. If she’d had fangs they would have been out and ready now.

Natasha flipped around as fast as her ribs would let her without blinding her keen eyesight with blinding white pain. She was in time to watch the assassin slit the one named Skadi from navel to throat and kick her, spilling entrails and all, into the dirt several feet away.

Then werewolf rounded on her. She froze and her calculating red eyes were met with sad blue ones.

It was the same woman, a woman she known from long ago.

The eyes that looked back at her from inside that human face, without really seeing, were empty and lost. There was nothing but a deadly weapon gazing down at the tableau before them.

But she didn’t dispatch her like the rest of them...

With her wild brown hair writhing about her head in the wind she walked away and disappeared halfway down the plain towards the lake. Natasha watched her go, mesmerized by the flashes of memory that were slowly becoming more and more real. At some point backup arrived but she barely noticed.

Everything else was fading around her and becoming gossamer while her memories became sharp and hard. As solid as the figure of that woman had been. The woman that the intelligence community had dubbed a ghost, a legend. She was a master sniper and assassin, a monster, a weapon forged from flesh, fur, and chrome simply known as The Winter Soldier.

And she had once been Natasha’s lover.


	2. A New Color to Paint the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat reminisces about the Old Country. It was fucking awful. 
> 
> (There are mentions of cannibalism so if you don't want to think about that skip the lines where Nat is lusting after meat that's on the floor.)

**_Camp Lehigh, original S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, New Jersey, March 3rd 2014_ **

Everything was covered in years of overgrown weeds and dust. No one had even been maintaining the grounds. The whole installation was just locked up in twenty foot tall razor wire fences and left to rot.

Yet there were traces of thick soled boot prints in the dirt. Boot prints long faded by wind and rain but fresh enough for her eyes to pick them up in the dark. That was one thing she always had to tone down around most other agents, the way her eyes flashed in dark, reflecting the tiniest bit of light and magnifying so that she could pick out the hairs on the back of Steve’s neck at fifty paces.

Having a tapetum lucidum was not normal for average humans.

But Steve Rogers was no longer an average human, he had become a symbol for all that was the super human. He was Nietzsche’s Übermensch no matter how much he wanted it to be otherwise.

A normal upstanding American citizen, a friend, a neighbor, he was all these things but he was also Captain America. As much as he would deny it, they were very much alike. She was many things to many people and so was he... except the things he was were good.

There was a reason Nick sent her on nearly every mission that had a dubious moral ambiguity to it. Nat was a spy first and an assassin second but always a pragmatist. Steve was a soldier but he also had a moral compass the likes of which the world had not seen in over seventy years.

It was fine with her that she did the dirty work so he didn’t even have to know about it. That’s why he didn’t trust her. But she hoped some day he would. That some day some one could trust her.

Luckily she didn’t have to explain to Steve why she could see footprints that had disappeared weeks ago as he noticed the old munitions bunker located in the wrong place. He also noticed the hidden elevator behind the bookcase. Her sight had zoomed in on the billowing cobwebs from the air behind it almost instantly but she had been looking around elsewhere for show anyway.

The thing was she wasn’t expecting the massive data bank of ancient 70s computer technology. That had been a surprise. The “War Games” reference had come naturally even though technically it was supposed to have come out a year before she was born. But then the computer spoke to them.

“Rogers, Steven born 1918. Romanova, Natalia Alianovna born 1928.”

Steve glanced at her with a furrowed brow that spoke volumes at that little bit of information but she managed to keep a hard blank expression on her face.

For a moment.

Then the digitized ghost of Arnim Zola explained how he and HYDRA had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. and how their ultimate goal of world domination and control was now at hand. She filed away the fact that HYDRA had assassinated Howard and Maria Stark for getting too close to the truth for later. She had her training literally hammered into after all. Intel was power.

All of this new information was something she couldn’t keep her emotions locked away about. This was something she had been complicit in. She had helped them. No matter what she thought S.H.I.E.L.D’s intentions had been she had been a HYDRA operative for the last 14 years as well.

Steve smashed the monitor. He didn’t want to hear this either.

The truth was necessary now though. No amount of punching was going to stop this particular chain of events. The doors to the elevator slammed shut and rebounded Steve’s shield. Her phone trilled a warning and she turned to Steve.

“Steve we’ve got a bogie. Short range ballistic, 30 seconds tops.”

“Who fired?”

All the color left her face, her mouth set into a grim scowl.

“S.H.I.E.L.D.”

She could survive it. Steve could too but Arnim Zola, with his big brain, didn’t seem to get that. And it was about to mean death for him.

Steve also didn’t know the full extent of what she was, what her not so human body could do. As the explosion raged and rocketed through the underground compound he threw himself over her, pushing them both into a drainage grate. Protecting her from the falling concrete and rebar as it collapsed on top of them.

He waited until everything settled then heaved off a large slab of fallen roof as she stood effortlessly, covered in dirt and dust but otherwise unharmed. His eyes narrowed but he didn’t say anything.

Instead he led both of them through the still burning wreckage back towards the truck they had parked a mile off in the woods. They didn’t speak as Steve drove them to a place he knew would be safe for them.

At this point Natasha was all out of options, all of her S.H.I.E.L.D contacts had to be assumed compromised and anyone else they could call on for help she knew Steve wouldn’t approve of. International assassins, smugglers, and information brokers sometimes didn’t make the best allies.

She could tell he wanted to ask her about what Arnim Zola had said, wanted just as much to ask her about her resilience. He had probably first noticed it when they were fighting the Chitauri two years ago. She managed to hold her own against an invading force, commandeer one of their attack vehicles and dismantle the tesseract almost single handedly. Then she came out of it with just a split lip and a bit of a limp that only lasted a day or so. But he hadn’t said anything then.

He knew either from guessing or from Tony Snooping Stark that multiple world governments, including the U.S., had tried to replicate the super soldier serum with varying levels of success. Who was to say that wasn’t why she was looking awfully spry for someone who was 86 years old? And that was something Steve assumed he was partly to blame for so he hadn’t confronted her about it. Yet.

They arrived at their destination, just after dawn. Which happened to be one of the outer suburbs of DC, to Steve’s friend’s house. He didn’t look upset to see them covered in soot and looking exhausted on his doorstep, just kinda surprised.

“I’m sorry about this but we need a place to lay low for awhile.”

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us.”

It was gallows humor and it was true. Which was why it was still funny. She had spent all of her life running from people trying to kill her but this was the first time since defecting from Russia that it was everyone she knew. But the way that Steve’s friend looked at both of them had told her several important things.

“Not everyone.”

If Steve trusted him with their lives then she was going to as well. He had just proved himself to her. That didn’t mean that she didn’t jump at every sound outside of the spray of the shower while she washed up.

Everything that had happened to her in the last 14 years since leaving Russia had been a shallow lie, a lie of omission. Nat thought she was protecting people when in reality she was still the same agent of death and chaos just under a new banner. And before that all of her life had been a lie. She didn’t know who or what she was anymore.

Steve exited the bathroom and stared at her. Nat didn’t want to meet his honest gaze when she hadn’t felt this dirty and exposed for a long time. Instead she just kept toweling her curling damp hair and staring out Sam’s shuttered windows.

“How you doing?”

When all she did was mumble a quick okay he moved in closer to her.

“What’s going on Natasha?”

He was surprisingly gentle as he kneeled in front of her seat on the bed, like she was some sort of skittish animal that would run away if he yelled. To be honest she would have handled this better if he had been yelling at her. That she had been conditioned to take and to work through.

This understanding kindness was not something she had seen from too many people. Clint was the only one who came to mind. To everyone else she was an employee, a colleague, an associate, or a weapon. Never a friend. Except maybe to Jenny.

The Winter Soldier was a mystery to Nat. She might have loved her back in her own way but she was so fragmented it was impossible to tell. Even if they did manage to take her down, to stop her from her mission, she had a feeling that woman would always be an enigma to her.

“When I defected to S.H.I.E.L.D. I thought that maybe I could make up for some of the things I had done. I thought I knew whose lies I was telling but it turns out I was just lying to myself. I can’t tell the difference any more–I...”

He reached out a careful hand and smoothed it over her shoulder, she slumped into it and he slowly pulled her toward him into a hug. Neither of them said anything for a long time. Together they let their breathing sync up as he held her with her forehead pressed against his collarbone. Nat didn’t cry anymore but she wished she could, now would have been a good time to do it.

“Zola was right about my age. At least I think he was. November 22nd 1928 is what the Soviet files said but S.H.I.E.L.D. had them buried along with the rest of my KGB dossier. I don’t know which memories are real and which they planted so I don’t trust any of them. It’s safer that way.”

He pulled back far enough to meet her eyes, there was pain in his expression but also determination.

“But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trust yourself. Just because things aren’t what you thought they were doesn’t mean you were in the wrong.”

A rueful smile cracked her lips.

“Ever heard the phrase, ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions?’”

He didn’t smile back.

“I trust you. After the last few days you and Sam are some of the only people I feel I can trust.”

She shook her head and started to pull away but his grip held strong.

“I swore to myself that I would never let anyone tamper with my mind again, never let anyone use me in the same way. Yet here we are. You shouldn’t trust me. For a long time I thought I could only trust myself but it turns out that isn’t true either.”

“Maybe you’re in the wrong business.”

He threw her phrase back at her playfully to try and lift her out of this hole she was digging. And he was right; she probably was. This was all she knew though, all her life, this was the sum of who she was.

“I owe you.”

“No, we’re friends. What are friends for if they can’t needlessly shield you from a collapsing building.”

“I wouldn’t have died but it still would have hurt like a sonofabitch so thanks all the same. If it came down to it know I would have done the same.”

He nodded solemnly and started to move to stand. Her hand shot out to stop him. There was more to say but she wasn’t sure if she could say it.

“Stay. There’s some things you should know before we make any more plans.”

Steve stayed to watch her struggle to reign in everything that she was feeling now.

Most of her just didn’t know how to process anymore and the old flint coating was starting to move back up her insides. The metallic tang of blood was cloying and hard in the back of her throat. A familiar horrific urge to bite down, to tear and to rend, and to wallow in the final pumps of a heart, was coming back.

She had killed too many people to count but the ones she killed with knives, and guns, and electric bolts didn’t haunt her nearly as much as the four she had killed with her teeth. Even now their faces still hovered over her eyelids before she fell asleep some nights. It was why she didn’t sleep all that much. That had been where the line was.

Doctor Laika and soldiers in the Red Rooms had wanted to find out how far they could push her, how far her killer instinct really went. They wanted to know just what kind of animal Natalia Romanova was and they found out. After that, they decided she was too dangerous like that, not the scalpel they wanted but more like a short circuiting chain saw.

So they rebuilt her from scratch.

The Black Widow was their most deadly asset, a finely tuned instrument, a weapon of sophistication. Evgeniya was not the same. She was not meant to be. Her abilities as a sniper were unrivaled, her hand to hand brutal, but she was a wolf. The Winter Soldier was Russia’s, and later HYDRA’s, attack dog. And she was damn near flawless at it.

“I’m not human, or at least not fully so, and if my memories are right at all then I never was. I knew the Winter Soldier for a little while back when we both worked out of the Red Rooms.”

She closed her eyes so she didn’t have to look at his face. It felt less scary that way to let the cold wash of memories take her away. A sigh and her monotone took on the lilt of her old accent as she told him about what she remembered from her time in Russia.

 

**_Undisclosed bunker, Rayevskaya, 2.7 miles outside Moscow, Russia, 1948_ **

 

They enjoyed breaking her down like a rifle.

It was good for her to be reminded of what she was every now and then, they said. This was their way of pushing her, pulling at her ballast to see where she would rip. The cell was dark and dry, nothing but smooth concrete walls. And bloody meat. She was so hungry.

It was a test, everything was always a test. They had made her run for 72 hours ragged, on a track, in hand to hand, at the punching bag. A Black Widow never faltered, each move was perfect, she was perfect.

Her body needed it, the blood sung to her from a stinking puddle in the middle of the floor. The smell was so overpowering each breath she took felt like a slap in the face. Her eyes changed and everything sped up so that the beat of her heart now felt slow.

Natalia made quick work of the three security cameras located seamlessly in the surrounding rock. The door was a little more difficult but the drive to get away from that pile of flesh was more than enough motivation.

They never told her what the meat was from but she knew.

There was nothing else that smelled quite so tempting to her.

Natalia was half-way down the hall before she was thrown back through the air. While still in mid-air she swiftly caught the nearest door handle and flipped herself to her feet nearly dislocating her shoulder. Thoughts of bodily well-being were far beyond her, all that mattered was stopping herself.

A soldier in a metal grated balaclava stalked towards her down the hallway. They didn’t say anything or maybe she just didn’t wait for them to. It was easy enough to slide on the floor alongside of them and make a run for door at the far end of the hall.

A cold metal hand closed mercilessly on the back of her neck jerking her to a stop. Two thickly muscled arms wrapped around her neck, one flesh and one not, pulled her back to their chest. She bit into the flesh one viciously. If she had been full-blooded vampyr her fangs would have gone straight through the tactical leather and into their arm. Then they would’ve been seriously fucked.

As it was, she was barely scratching their skin. She snarled and released their arm to elbow the person holding her as hard as she could in the spleen. They let out a surprised grunt and loosened their grip enough for Natalia to slam the heel of her palm up under their chin and stomp down hard on their instep.

The soldier released her and she was off again down the hall. It was nearly effortless in her fear to make it to the door handle. A growl from behind her didn’t stop her hand from closing around it but a maw full of wicked teeth did.

Crying out in pain would have been weakness so instead she put all the force of her pain into her feet and brought one back as hard as she could into the throat of the beast behind her. But it was still clamped on her forearm snarling.

“Let me go dog!”

To her shock it did release her and she stumbled forward against the door from the force of her own struggle. A familiar male voice came over the speakers.

“Stand down Black Widow. Return to your cell immediately. That is an order.”

She was starting to panic.

Something in her head was telling her to disobey even though she knew how that would end. It was almost the better alternative than returning to the blood soaked concrete.

Her arm wasn’t healing as much as it should have been. Natalia hadn’t slept or eaten in almost four days in non-stop combat but her abilities were still more than human. There was no denying what she was. The werewolf shifted back to their original form behind her. With her senses she could feel the outline of its silhouette, warped by the heavy metal left arm, as it matched her step by step down the hall back to the cell.

Instead of slamming the door and locking her inside they stepped in behind her and waited in the doorway. She sank down next to the pile of human gore and ran her hands through it. The red and dripping meat was disgustingly cold so she just licked the blood off her hands.

She cleaned her fingers with her tongue like a cat, then scraped them through the pile again. Over and over, faster and faster, until she was tearing it into hunks and squeezing the blood into her mouth. It ran black rivulets down her face and throat.

It was obscene but at least she wasn’t eating them. Told herself she had no desire to eat them.

Unlike the wolf watching her must have.

Natalia taunted them some more in Russian.

The didn’t respond at first. But when they did their reaction came in English.

“Are you still hungry?”

Without thinking she replied in English as well.

“What?”

They shifted nervously then started unstrapping one of their tactical packs. Tentatively, they extended a sandwich half wrapped in wax paper to her. It was a simple thing, just white bread and a piece of canned meat, but she took it hurriedly and devoured it.

It soaked up and chased the taste of blood from her mouth replacing it with plastic normalcy. The sandwich was gone in three bites and she eyed the soldier the entire time she ate it.

They just watched her blankly with empty blue-black eyes. There was no revulsion, no judgement, no fear. There wasn’t much behind their eyes but they had offered her food, food that any other Russian soldier would have eaten themselves. She switched back to Russian because the soldier obviously spoke it.

“Who are you?”

When they didn’t answer she moved to her feet carefully. Her arm was scabbed over by now, even if it was pink and oozing a clear liquid. She used it to wipe the rest of the cold blood from her face as she warily approached the figure. The balaclava had releases on the sides and the soldier froze uncomfortably but didn’t move to stop her. The mask slid off and she took in the hard and feminine face that stared back at her. This time she used English.

“You’re a woman?”

There was no reply as Natalia ran her fingers through their thick dark brown hair.

“What is your name?”

She wasn’t expecting an answer but she also didn’t want them to leave. Just having someone else there, someone who had shown her a small kindness felt good. The soldier replied in perfect Russian.

“I don’t know.”

She raised a red eyebrow at that.

“You don’t know if you’re a woman or what your name is?”

Their eyebrows furrowed, a look of childlike frustration crossed their face.

“I might have been a woman once... I remember hating dresses though. There’s so much that’s not...... there.”

That was the most she had ever heard this person say so she was going to try to cut them some slack.

“I hate dresses too and I am a woman. But if you are not sure I will call you Wolf instead. Not too bad, yeah?”

They didn’t respond and Natalia still couldn’t read much into their face. The dawning suspicion that there wasn’t much there for her to read started to creep up on her. Her first friend and they were little more than a puppet with garrott strings.

“Will you sit with me for a while? I am tired but I’m not sure I can fall asleep without someone to watch for me.”

She meant that as both to watch out for her and to watch her, to make sure she hadn’t finally tipped over the edge into inhuman after her blood bath earlier. Wolf didn’t say anything but they allowed her to lead them to the far corner facing the doorway to sit.

Dropping to sleep on the concrete floor was easy now that she could no longer smell the blood. Her senses had been sated and everything was muffled and quiet. Curling into as tight a ball as her body would allow she started to fall asleep. Right before it took her she felt Wolf gently take her head and place it on their thigh, smoothing her long red hair with their jointed metallic arm as she closed her eyes again.

When she awoke they were gone.

It was always like that with Wolf. Sometimes they would be there. Most times they were gone. Either on a mission, or later she found out, in cryo-freeze. It was like that for nearly twenty years. For a short time they shared one of the gray Soviet dorm rooms together. She never asked why because it was comforting to have them there even if they never spoke to her.

There was one window that looked out on a coal stack but at least sometimes she could see the washed out blue of the sky. Their narrow brown blanketed twin beds were right next to each other in the massive empty dorm room.

She remembered waking up more than one night with Wolf spooned against her back. Silent and deathly still. Instead of pushing them away she pulled them closer and wrapped her arms around the ones at her waist. They rarely talked, partly because Wolf didn’t have much to say and partly because they didn’t need to. It was freeing to communicate with glances and small touches. Wolf almost never initiated contact while Natalia was awake.

They waited until her watchful gaze slipped into sleep before they would hold her or gently card their hands through her hair. She didn’t mind it. In fact she was quite sure that she liked this kind of contact. The fragile silent thread between them was the only non-violent human touch either one of them had. Neither one of them wanted to ruin it. It was too precious.

There wasn’t much to see on the base. The only time she really got to observe the developments in the world outside were from shadowed streets, a target’s bedroom, or from a para-military helicopter. Of course she read about them, endless briefings and certain published materials were funneled to her for her various missions. She had to be more world savvy than Wolf. They were eventually given the code name The Winter Soldier because they belonged to Mother Russia.

They were both her children but only Wolf was ice, Natalia was fire. Both were the end of the world for their targets. It didn’t matter that they came at it from different approaches, separate or together they were weapons.

Wolf was her back up on more than one mission, stationed far away behind their rifle scope, watching for danger over her shoulder. Neutralizing threats so she could take what or who they needed and escape unscathed.

One time when they were together in Kiev, Natalia was shot through the gut.

Those kind of injuries were always the most dangerous and she was losing too much blood to remain running from gunfire much longer. It wasn’t supposed to go down this way. She wasn’t supposed to be close enough to anyone with a gun for this to happen.

Their intel had been stale apparently, because the vaults were being guarded by a military trained force, hired guns. Which were stupid enough for her to get past the first time but it was on the return trip that she was spotted. Taking out eight of them with several pistol rounds had been routine but they had a sniper as well.

The bullet tore through her and she rolled with the pain and blood spray frantically for cover. Trying to keep to the line of the building with one hand on her gun, the other on her gunshot wound, she ran back towards the extraction point. A second shot whizzed by her head grazing her right ear as she dropped to the ground.

Pain made her black out for a second. Like a computer going into sleep mode, on and then suddenly off. It didn’t last more than a blink or two before she was scrambling to her feet again.The bad part was the shot had slowed her down.

Natalia was almost there, so close to safety and to a getaway. The only thing she remembered after that was the lights reflecting off the buildings in front of her.

There was nothing but a foggy gray patch after those lights. When she woke up days later in the medical bay with a wicked scar and Wolf hovering over her bedside she put most of it together. Mission reports simply stated she had achieved her objective of obtaining the rocket blueprints and The Winter Soldier had eliminated all hostiles before extraction.

Their eyes were still lost but when they saw her looking at them they snaked their hand through her own and held it. She smiled even as the image of Wolf literally tearing those men limb from limb flashed behind her eyes.

The night after she got out of the hospital ward Wolf didn’t wait for her to fall asleep before crawling into the narrow twin bed with her. This time she rolled over to face them and ran her hand over the scar tissue all around their left shoulder sticking out of their tank where their flesh met their metal arm. Oddly it was the only noticeable scars on their body and was layered bizarrely like an onion. It made her wonder if the arm hurt her digging into her skin like that. Wolf just watched her hand and then her eyes before returning the gesture only they had to slide her shirt up to get to the spiderweb scar on her stomach.

“I think I remember my name.”

Natalia wasn’t expecting them to say anything so she jumped and Wolf withdrew their hand like they had been burned and started to shift away to stand. Her hand gently grabbed their elbow.

“That’s good. What should I call you precious one?”

Wolf responded in English.

“Jenny maybe Jen. I think I was a girl who hated dresses.”

Natalia switched to English to make her more comfortable. Then ran her hand up her shoulder to her tangled brown hair.

“Evgeniya. It’s a good name. Unless you would prefer Volchitsa now instead of Volk? But you will always be my dragotsenny.”

An internal battle was taking place and it showed on her face. It was like any thoughts that weren’t fed to her by her handlers hurt her to make.

“Good. I want to call you solnyshko. I burn when I watch you.”

She smiled and nodded once. English was a clumsy language that she only really spoke with Evgeniya or on missions but it was her language and if she wanted to be called by her name then Natalia would. She ran her hand from Jen’s hair to her face and brushed her fingers over her cheeks and lips. Her eyes fluttered shut and she sighed.

Then she leaned in closer, their lips almost touching and Natalia asked for permission.

“I want to kiss you. May I?”

Jen let out a choked sound but nodded, still with her eyes smashed closed. She kissed her and at first there wasn’t much of a reaction from her but slowly she opened up. Relaxing enough for Natalia to push closer to her, push a little deeper, a little harder against her mouth.

After carefully kissing her she slowly started to push down on her chest and shift on top of her. Jen’s hands instinctively found her hips and ass. As she did Natalia sighed against her mouth. Seeming to realize what she had just done her hands flew away from her and Natalia pulled up to look into frantic blue eyes.

“I don’t want to.”!

“No. I don’t want to hurt you.”

The robotic hand shook slightly and then started to softly rub her lower back. It was achingly gentle and slightly cooler than the air on her shoulders and face.

This was what pain felt like.

Pain of the body was energy, rage, motivation, sometimes glee. This pain was of the heart and mind. The kind of pain that was tenderness cut her deeper than any blade ever had. It was brutal and it was unfair. And she wanted it, wanted it more than she could remember ever wanting to feel anything before.

“You won’t. I trust you.”

Her blue eyes went huge at that and she looked so lost again. Always lost whenever she wasn’t on a mission, whenever there were no orders. Natalia wanted her to find herself, wanted to give her something she could hang onto and remember. She leaned down and started to kiss her along her jaw and then down to the hollow of her throat. Jen’s breath increased and her hands, both metal and flesh, went to Natalia’s hips so she could grind up roughly against her. She let out a low moan against her throat at that.

Natalia had never done this with someone she actually cared for before. Sometimes she did it because she could with anyone she wanted. Or she was on an undercover mission and it was all but ordered of her to play along. And it did feel good most times, she made sure of that. This was different though. She nipped gently at the other’s collarbone and felt her hips stutter under her so she did it again harder and enjoyed Jen practically writhing under her.

She then slid her hands under her shirt and fumbled with her chest binder. Jen seemed to snap out of her haze for a moment as she sat up and helped Natalia undress her. When she was finally topless Natalia carefully took her one of her breasts in hand and then kissed it, enjoying the shiver that got from her. Then she sucked her nipple into her mouth and Jen cried out.

They weren’t huge breasts but they had been bound up all day in tactical leathers for optimum movement and ease of firing a rifle. And that made them extremely tender. Probably painful. She eased up and lightly started to caress the other one running her nails over the nipple as she sucked.

There had only been one other time when she had had sex with a woman but she had enjoyed the shared touching of it immensely. This was even better because it was Jen.

Her wolf.

Jen was panting harder than she had ever heard her breathe. Normally she was silent, unnerving in her stillness. Her hands were no longer deadly steady and she was fumbling with the back clasp of Natalia’s bra under her shirt. Her metal hand pushed so hard it bent the clasps shut.

She pulled away from her breast and removed her bra and top in one fluid movement. Jen stared up at her in adoration, blue eyes roving over exposed chest and lingering on her small pink nipples. Careful calloused hands cupped them and Natalia hummed approvingly as she ground down against her. Jen gained more confidence and took one hand away from her breast to rub her palm between Natalia’s legs. That made her sigh and push back against that hand on her through her sweat pants.

“Yes. I want you inside of me.”

Jen let out a strangled noise at her declaration and when Natalia’s eyes fluttered open she noticed she was crying. Startled she reached out and ran her thumb over her cheeks, wiping up the tears.

“What’s wrong dragotsenny?”

“I don’t...I don’t know. But I want that too.”

Natalia smiled at that as she bent over on her knees, propped up on one arm, to wiggle out of her pants and underwear. Jen sat up with her and Natalia rolled off of her onto her back on the bed. She was taking her time, like she was trying to burn the image of Natalia into glass in the shifting sand that was her mind.

Her fingers grazed her inner thighs and she let them fall open even wider. She teased her, picking up wetness from her opening and smearing it around her clit, barely circling it. And then her mouth was hot and hard on hers, almost vicious as two fingers entered her. Natalia cried out and Jen froze then woodenly backed away from the kiss.

“Don’t you dare stop. Fuck me Jen. I want you to.”

That seemed to be the right thing to say to her because then they were moving together. Natalia riding Jen’s fingers as she moved them inside of her, her palm rubbing against her clit with every thrust. She was pretty sure she clawed deep nail marks down her back as she rode her but Jen didn’t seem to care.

Jen was coming apart from fucking Natalia with her fingers, she had to have been dripping all over the mattress but she didn’t spare a hand for herself. All her energy was on Natalia, on touching her, on making her come. And she did with a shout of Jen’s name.

Jen waited for the clenching around her fingers to stop before she slipped them out slowly. Natalia ached without them, without her, so she pulled her close for another sloppy kiss. Then ran her hands down her sides. Her hand slipping past the waistband of her pants to caress the wet mass of hair between Jen’s legs.

“Do you want me to make you come as well dragotsenny?”

Jenny nodded mutely and let Natalia push her back down against the end of the creaking bed. Natalia jerked down the pants over her ass and kissed the inside of her thighs where they met her hip bone and sucked. Jen hissed and squirmed up against her. Then her mouth was on her, nosing her folds and licking her from slit to clit in several slow strokes.

She didn’t last long as Natalia kneaded her ass and thighs, licking quick little circles around her clit. Jen spilled gasping and wordless against her mouth and she gladly licked her sensitized labia clean.

Then moved up on her elbows and saw Jen watching her with wide blissed out eyes. She grinned at her and licked the fluid that was still clinging around her mouth all the way down to her chin. Jen shivered and pulled her up over her chest. She buried her nose in Natalia’s head of red hair and whispered her name, calling her my little sun over and over.

That night they slept skin to sweaty skin. Curled up like they usually did except this time Natalia was holding Evgeniya, nuzzling the back of neck with her arms wrapped around her softly exhaling chest. When she woke up the next morning Jenny was gone.

She didn’t see her again for almost another 40 years.

Or perhaps more accurately she didn’t remember seeing her again until Sweden in 2011. She could have worked with her for every mission in Russia and forgotten her every time they put her in the overwriting chair.

And over time she faded from her memory, through multiple wipes, became just a dream, and finally a story she had heard someone else tell over hushed drinks. Natasha realized now that she had been a test like all the others. She had always wondered which one of them they were testing and if either of them failed. The answer to those questions was probably both.

So when she had switched sides any lingering feelings for The Winter Soldier were disregarded by her as another set of emotions planted by the Red Room in her mind. Most of the times she spent out of missions could have been planted so she refused to believe it.

Until she had seen the reticulated chrome arm of that brown werewolf and those hunted blue eyes again.

Then she had started to remember.

It was like a movie she had seen of someone else’s life at first. But slowly she started to feel it again. A horrified part of her wondered how much worse it was for Jen. They had warped her mind, wiping it and freezing her more times than was wise. Every time putting her in the overwriting chair, molding her, fine tuning her thoughts to only process what they needed them to for any given mission.

Natalia was probably not even a memory for her. Maybe just a scent, or a tingle. The person those tortured eyes on the air strip had belonged to had known her and shielded her from harm. Some of Jen was still left in there even after 70 plus years of abuse, brainwashing, and cryo-freezing.

Steve held her for a long time after she stopped talking.

Nat had left out the sex in her story and kept the intimacy but he wasn’t stupid. Steve knew that she had loved and been loved by The Winter Soldier. Clint was the only other person she had told. Nat gathered her scattered emotions up to go see Sam about taking down HYDRA. There was still work to be done.

They were superheroes after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Another update. Thanks to my wonderful beta and good friend sparksflyupward. She has the best comments on the doc you have no idea. Also she suggested I mention the Russian translations here. Sooooo....
> 
> Volk is the male form of wolf and Volchitsa is the female (oh languages that gender everything male and female you make it hard for us non-binary folks)
> 
> Dragotsenny is "precious one." Of course.
> 
> Evgeniya is Russian for Jenny.
> 
> Solnyshko is "little sun." (pet names, I love them). 
> 
> And for future reference sobaka is dog. 
> 
> Hope everyone is enjoying this so far because I sure am. Steve's POV chapter is next. Followed by Bucky. That one is gonna be one hell of ride. I feel I should mention that the fic is currently at 40,000 words and counting. So you have that to look forward to.


	3. Love, Hunt Me Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve made the decision to find Bucky no matter what shape she was in and began a new sort of relationship with Sam. 
> 
> Bucky tried to weave pieces of her mind into place to form a narrative that made sense. She knew him. The man on the bridge. Steve Rogers.

**_Undisclosed Location, Somewhere inside Michaux State Forest, Pennsylvania, March 5th 2014_ **

 

Steve was a wreck.

Nat had opened up to him about Bucky. Well at the time they had both thought of her as The Winter Soldier but she wasn’t. She was his best friend, his champion, his kindred spirit, his first love.

Bucky was the person he missed the most now that he was in the 21st century and here she was, except not really. Nat knew some of his pain as it turned out. As she healed quickly from a gunshot wound while shooting some of S.H.I.E.L.D’s blood serum they had sat together in silence.

He could tell Bucky was on her mind but also how Fury still hadn’t fully trusted her. That was important to her. She wanted to be trusted, he suspected it went deeper than that. She wanted to be accepted for all that she was, all that she had done, and be embraced regardless. He slung a heavy arm around her and she leaned into it. Sam came upon them outside on the bridge after the sun dipped below the trees and sat down on his other side.

“She’s not the same guy you both knew all those years ago.”

Nat scoffed bitterly at that.

“You didn’t know me back then Wilson. She’s probably not that different from the Jen I knew she just doesn’t know me any more. Bucky doesn’t know you either.”

Steve looked back at her and shook his head. No she was wrong. Bucky had recognized him. He had seen it in her eyes when she fought him, there was something there. Like a shard of glass in her arm that she couldn’t see but could feel.

All Steve had to do was keep reminding her of herself. Of the person she was under all of that leather and fur.

He had known that Hitler, and other world leaders, had been trying to harness the shadow races for war. He wasn’t at all surprised that HYDRA had been experimenting on them as well. The general public still thought of vampires, werewolves, witches, and shapeshifters as legends or blockbuster fodder.

Yet they were willing to accept supermen were real.

He had had run ins with a few vampires while fighting with the Howling Commandos but they had all seemed more like predatory animals, shadows made of hunger, than men. Natasha admittedly was only a half-vampire but still she was different. There was an iron streak of precision and control in her that he suspected came more from her spirit than her brainwashing in the Red Rooms. Sam turned to him gravely.

“She doesn’t seem like the kind of person you save. More like the kind you stop. Can you do that? Can you take her out if it comes to it?”

Steve closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose slowly, twice then three times.

“It won’t come to that.”

Nat stirred at his side and pulled away to stand and look down at him with shrewd blue eyes.

“She’s not Bucky. She’s The Winter Soldier. I’ve worked with her. We were once the right and left hands of Mother Russia. We never failed a mission. It will come to that.”

And then she walked away leaving him and Sam alone on the bridge. Sam shook his head.

“I’m sorry.”

Steve looked at him and Sam reached out and squeezed his arm.

“It hurts bad enough to lose a friend once. Riley was one of the most important people in my life. One minute he was there and then he was gone. I kept turning corners on base expecting to see him there or at the mess laughing. To lose him again; that would be a fresh new Hell.”

Steve straightened his shoulders and stood up. Sam really did get it as much as someone who wasn’t a genetically altered formerly frozen super soldier could. Steve would persevere. That was what was required of him.

“I’m a soldier. Fresh new Hells come with the job.”

Sam shot him a gap toothed grin and stood to bump shoulders with him.

“If anyone can pull all this off it’s you Captain.”

Steve gave him a rueful dimpled smile and bumped him back knocking him a little off balance as they both wandered back inside. Sam just laughed.

Fury’s plan was a suicide mission but he was used to those. He had survived at 75 year deep freeze from one them. Odds were, he could do it again. Especially if it was for Buck.

She consumed a lot of his thoughts even as he fought to focus on the mission and preparing for it. It was his and Sam’s job to deliver the sim chips into the Helicarriers to override Zola’s targeting systems.

The rest, Pierce and the dismantling of HYDRA, was up to Natasha, Fury, and Hill. He, Buck, and the Howlies had done much the same on that HYDRA base and they only had two more people. And if he was being honest Fury and Natasha alone were probably each worth eight agents.

But then again so was Bucky.

 

_“Sometimes I think you like getting punched.”_

_Her voice was teasing and unmistakable. He just wished for the 100th time that she wasn’t the one to save him. That he could save himself._

_“I had him on the ropes. And what the hell are you wearing?”_

_He brushed away the friendly hand she had offered to help him up off the ground of the mucky gravel alleyway. She was dressed head to toe like an infantryman in crisp olive pants and jacket, her gold rank of first sergeant on the lapels. The bully she beat off of him probably thought she was one but Steve knew better._

_She grinned down haughtily at him from under her cap._

_“You’re looking at the newest member of the 107th my boy.”_

_She winked and did a spin for him to admire her full uniform._

_“But how? They don’t let girls enlist, not in the infantry divisions, maybe as a nurse or–”_

_Bucky jovially slapped her arm around his shoulders making him stumble a bit on purpose._

_“Well the army’s never seen a gal quite so fit for service as Jen Buchanan Barnes. Also I’ve been going as a boy since I was in diapers and rubber pants. If I could coast through the physical without them looking that close I can manage the war.”_

_“This is the stupidest idea you’ve had yet. Somebody will notice. And then you’ll be court martialed or worse. Bucky go back to the recruiters and tell them it was a mistake. Maybe–”_

_She stopped walking with him and removed her arm from around his narrow shoulders._

_“Steve, you’re always trying to prove yourself to everyone, and boy do I admire your for it. This time it’s my turn. I have to prove I can cut it doing anything the boys can do and do it better.”_

_Steve knew there was no arguing with her now. If there was one person on earth who was more bull-headed than he was it was Bucky. Maybe that’s why they got on so well._

_“You don’t have to prove something that’s already true Buck.”_

_Her grin split her rough face and she was beautiful. Bucky ruffled Steve’s hair playfully before linking arms with him and dragging him down the street._

_“Where are we going?”_

_Steve would follow her anywhere but it seemed like the only thing left for him to ask._

_With a wry twist of her mouth she intoned._

_“The future.”_

 

Steve opened his eyes to find Fury looking at him incredulously.

“Was I boring you Captain? Cause if so you can get the hell out of my conference room and go take a nap.”

Steve colored a little bit and schooled his face into a more serious look.

“No Sir. Continue.”

Fury sighed exasperated and turned to Maria Hill.

“I’m getting too old for this shit. We’re done. We move out at 0700. Get some Goddamn rest.”

He said the last part directly at Steve and he nodded mutely in response. Sam caught up with him after the briefing on the way to the cots they were all sleeping on.

“Hey you gonna fight this war in khaki’s?”

Steve grinned at him and turned down the hall back towards the entrance and away from their bunks.

“I was hoping you’d ask that. If you’re gonna fight a war you need a uniform.”

 

**_The Triskelion, S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, Washington D.C., 1400 hrs, March 6th 2014_ **

 

Disarming Pierce’s attack force and securing the room was the first major move of the mission and she executed it flawlessly. Now it was just a matter of hacking into S.H.I.E.L.D.’s security mainframe and massive data banks.

Which she might have had past experience with.

The rest of the World Security Council seemed confused as to what she was doing. Pierce on the other hand knew exactly what she was planning to do with all that information.

“You do realize you’ll be leaking all of S.H.I.E.L.D’s secrets to the world. Endangering hundreds of undercover agents that are your men.”

It wasn’t a question; he was trying to manipulate her.

“And HYDRA’s.”

He scoffed and then looked her dead in the eyes.

“And yours. Are you really ready for the world to know about your kind? To have them hunt you down with nightshade bullets and mistletoe cross bow bolts? All the things you’ve done with those abilities of yours. Are you ready for the world to see you as you really are?”

Her eyes flashed dangerously red at him. He flinched and then repelled her gaze, even normal humans could if they practiced, but all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s high ranking members had had their brain chemistry altered to stop control by vampyrs and dampyrs. Instead she just smiled at his momentary fear.

“Are you?”

Fury arrived moments later and along with Pierce’s retinal scan they were able to release all of S.H.I.E.L.D’s highly classified data into the world. Or at least give them passwords to it. Basically anyone with an internet connection could now search S.H.I.E.L.D.’s servers for anything they wanted to know.

Other intelligence agencies, freelancers, and just reddit and tumblr users were flooding in and archiving the information across the web. Wikileaks was going to be a mad house for days. She had possibly just gotten hundreds of her agents killed, including Clint, but it was a necessary evil. At least she told herself that when she pressed the button.

He would make it out though, he had somewhere around six lives left if they were counting. Nat had to believe that.

Now it was even trending on twitter. Soon the denizens of the internet would sift through all of it and find the particularly damning things. The things about her. What if she could beat them to it. Maybe the truth was her weapon for once.

She wondered if Steve was out there fighting a much more physical battle with The Winter Soldier.

With Jen.

Nat couldn’t let either thought distract her as she and Nick made their escape from headquarters, the helicarriers above them opening fire on each other in a hail of cannon blasts and automatic bullet-piercing rounds. Bucky and Steve were still up there.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve fought her back again but she was different. More erratic, just as violent, her punches didn’t lack power. However they lacked the precision and coordination that had seemed innate before. She was just as strong as he was now. Neither one of them was the little guy this time around.

He threw her down again and dislocated the shoulder not attached to a robot arm which must have hurt but she just growled and started to shift into the massive lupine shape she had occupied before.

He couldn’t hold her anymore so he let go and sprinted for a handhold on the control terminal. Catching it, he pulled himself up and felt a bullet rip through his left shoulder. Grunting he pulled himself up another level and kept climbing. With just his right arm.

Another bullet whizzed past his head as he rolled up to the main data panel. He started to insert it when a bullet cut through his gut. It was the most pain he had felt since he had had scarlet fever. It wasn’t enough to stop him though. Millions of people would die if he didn’t carry on.

They were counting on him.

So he jammed the re-router into the panel and it lit up green as it handed over control of all three helicarriers’ targeting systems to Maria Hill. He stood and Bucky slammed a fist into his face, stumbling he looked up at her again. One hand on his bleeding stomach the other removing his shield.

“I won’t fight you. You’re my friend.”

He dropped his shield into the Potomac with no regret, to prove he wasn’t a threat to her.

“You’re my mission.”

She kept saying it as she kicked and punched him in the face but he didn’t fight back. Bucky sent him flying and stumbling to the ground as he tried to block her with his failing strength.

Each time it sounded like she was trying to convince herself and the last time she said it came out as a sob. She was about ready to shift and finish him but he didn’t care. Because if that was what Bucky needed him to do then he would do it. She had always been there to protect him and he had let her fall. Now it was his turn.

“Then finish it. Cause I’m with you ‘till the end of the line.”

Bucky froze mid-punch there was anger and fear in her wide blue eyes but also recognition.

Terrible recognition.

Another explosion rocked the helicarrier and he was falling like the flaming metal debris in the sky around him. Just dropping into the river below.

There was darkness and then nothing, not even cold.

He woke up feeling like he had been run over by several tanks in a row. Sam was asleep at his bedside, playing the Marvin Gaye CD he had recommended Steve listen to. It didn’t take too much longer for him to recover after opening his eyes again.

While he was still convalescing in the hospital he watched the Senate hearings with Natasha begin on TV. She made a point to flash her red eyes at the camera every now and then just to remind them of what she was. She might have looked like only a deadly assassin in a smart business suit, which she was, but she also wasn’t entirely human.

There were separate hearings being held about the legal status of people that might turn out to be more than human and she was going to speak at those too.

Now everyone knew exactly what she had done and what had been done to her. In cold military print the files explained how she was trained and tortured, molded into the elegant force of death that sat before them.

And she was in the right. When all those powerful men condescendingly asked her why they shouldn’t lock her up or worse. She told them they needed her and the others like her.

Now that a large chunk of S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA’s secrets: the majority of their weapon specs, intel, sleeper agents, personnel files, and tax records were public knowledge the government needed her. They were going to have to listen to Natasha and others like her to clean up the mess and actually start to make a difference. There was no doubt in his mind they would assemble the Avengers again. It was only a matter of time.

Before that happened though, he needed to find Bucky.

She had saved him and she was still out there on her own. Alone and probably conflicted. After all she had failed her mission. To kill Steve and Natasha were the only instructions that had been given to her by her HYDRA handlers before the helicarriers fell. HYDRA was probably still out there looking for her if they hadn’t already found her.

Steve knew that they hadn’t yet. Something had altered in her and now she was looking for answers. Now he was going to look for her.

Sam was with him all the way.

He stayed with Steve in the hospital and let him crash at his place when he got out. His apartment felt even more empty and out of place now than it did before and Sam’s was comforting.

Which was most likely because it contained Sam, who continued to try and cheer him up. He wasn’t using tactics he had learned from working at the Veteran’s center though. He was using flirting. And it was working.

They had watched “Coming to America” curled up on the couch together with only a bowl of popcorn keeping them from being in each other’s laps. And Steve hadn’t pulled away when Sam had absently started stroking his neck all the way down his shoulders and arms while they watched.

In fact he had leaned into the touch and soon the empty popcorn bowl was discarded and they were cuddling while finishing out the movie. When the credits wrapped Steve looked up at Sam cautiously but he just smiled back down at him.

“Whatever you need I’m here for you.”

Steve swallowed nervously but smiled as he closed the gap between them. Sam was just as warm and welcoming a lover as he was a friend. They started slow but soon Steve was pulling off Sam’s shirt and running his hands up his muscled stomach and sides. It had been too long since he had done this. Well technically he’d never done exactly this, not with a man, but sex hadn’t happened to him since 1945.

Steve hadn’t been lying to Nat. He had kissed someone before Natasha after waking up in the future. It had been Peggy when he came to see her in the nursing home for the first time. She was able to stand then and they had had that dance. The kiss was a surprise but he cherished it. Her memory was better then, a part of him didn’t want to see her deteriorate but he loved her and had made a promise. So over the last two years he had been to see her every week even as she started to see him less and less.

The last person he had slept with though was Bucky.

Soon after he had busted her and the Howlies out of that HYDRA fortification and they had ended up in a shady Allied pub in London. The rest of the gang was trying to drink each other under the table. Bucky had a look in her eye. It was mullish determination. And when Peggy had come in and made her intentions clear Bucky had taken him out back and kissed him.

That had been a long time ago.

Less time for him, well less time that he could remember. When he found Bucky again he was going to make so many refrigerator jokes with her. They had both been on ice for some time, it seemed. This was good though. He needed touch, affection, and understanding. And getting that from Sam was making him glow.

Sam was patient with him and let Steve take the lead, he seemed content just to be touching him, kissing him. Steve was painfully hard though and wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. So he asked in between slow drawn out kisses.

“Can I rub off against your leg?”

Sam looked surprised and then motioned towards the obvious bulge in Steve’s pants.

“I can do you one better than that if you let me. Unless that’s really what you want to do.”

Steve helplessly shook his head, then nodded, then sighed and took Sam’s hand in his and placed it on his crotch. Sam laughed and took mercy on him in his flustered state and quickly unzipped his fly which had become grating against his erection.

Sam slipped it from his boxer briefs and whistled in appreciation as he ran his hands over the head pulling back his foreskin. Steve let out a whimper and couldn’t stop his head from falling back against the couch. When Sam started to jerk him off the moans and gasps wouldn’t stop coming out of him. He opened his eyes several times to see Sam watching his every delicious reaction with pleasure and licking his lips as he concentrated on Steve.

“Damn, it must have been a long time for you.”

“Or maybe you’re just that good.”

Steve gasped out at him. He hadn’t been this out of breath since he used to have chronic asthma. Every nerve ending, every new muscle he had slowly become used to, was on fire and Sam was just giving him the most amazing handjob of his life. Steve was gripping the couch hard enough to tear the leather just so he wouldn’t fall off the face of the earth. Sam laughed and leaned down to kiss him while he increased the pressure of his steady strokes and twisted his palm to brush gently over the head.

“Baby I know that I’m just that good.”

Steve laughed and pulled him closer to deepen the kiss, his tongue running over Sam’s palate, their lips moving in time with his hand and Steve’s now stuttering thrusts. He came with a sigh against Sam’s lips, both of them panting as they pulled apart.

Sam got up and went to his kitchen to get a wet towel and then slowly cleaned Steve up so thoroughly he was half-hard again by the time he was finished.

“What about you. What would you like me to do?”

Sam chuckled at that and sat back down on the couch, letting his legs splay open wider for Steve to fit between them.

“How do you feel about using your mouth to get me off?”

Steve flushed and grinned cheekily at that him.

“Only my mouth?”

Sam rolled his eyes and pulled him closer playfully.

“And maybe your tongue too smart ass, come here.”

Steve had never given a blowjob before. He wasn’t sure if that one time with Bucky counted because it wasn’t a flesh and blood cock but he was more than willing to give it a shot.

He was sloppy and Sam had to pull him off and give him instructions a couple times but that almost made it hotter. The flesh was firm in his mouth, slightly bitter with the taste of pre-cum. Rumbling vibrations of pleasure went through him whenever Sam didn’t control himself and bucked choking Steve.

The choking part wasn’t bad though, he kind of actually liked it. And even if Steve wasn’t the best at giving a blowjob yet it was still fun for both of them. Sam instructed him suck on his balls and when Steve did that Sam came with a shout gripping Steve by the short hairs of his neck and swearing a blue streak.

That night Steve didn’t sleep on the couch but instead on Sam’s slab of a bed curled up around him. He was completely sated and relaxed. It was some of the best sleep of the 21st century.

 

_**Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington County, Virginia, May 2014** _

 

She watched them from behind some of the only tree cover on this side of the cemetery. They were in the section for U.S. leaders over a grave that didn’t hold the body of Nicholas J. Fury.

The soldier had been tracking the man named Steven Grant Rogers, alias Captain America, since the paramedics had taken him from the riverbank she had left him on to a secure hospital. Luckily hospitals were busy places and when she needed to she could look like a nurse or an exhausted daughter of an ailing diplomat while she walked by the armed guards outside Steve Roger’s room.

It had been easier to watch him once he had woken up and had started to open the blinds to his room. She still had her rifle with the scope.

The first thing she had done was empty the two stache spots of non-sequential bills and her rifle and gun kits. Her handlers were either dead or in disarray so no one was there to stop her from taking what she needed and disappearing. There were other caches full of useful items. She knew there had to be but she couldn’t remember where they were. Brazil, Romania, China, New Zealand, all of it was familiar enough to give her a headache but too foreign to make sense of.

Trying to remember useful information was like trying to catch smoke rings from a cigarette. It looked like she had it perfectly clasped in her fist but as soon as she opened it the smoke had vanished. The soldier did the best with what she had.

The weather wasn’t too rainy and it was warm enough here in D.C. that she didn’t have to call up her fur to keep her warm. It always felt like the beast was there before; constantly fighting her to get out and kill something until she made it obey. Until she brought it to heel like her handlers brought her to heel. But like her masters, the wolf in her had disappeared. It was like it had completely retreated from her consciousness.

If she needed it to heal or to fight it would come but until then it was almost like it was afraid of her. The soldier was starting to wonder if it wasn’t a part of her. If that thing with teeth and fur was programming her handlers had given her. Another weapon in her arsenal and not some innate part of her being as it had always felt. There might have been a time when she wasn’t a monster. That didn’t matter now though. She had a new mission.

The red headed woman was there.

_Volk._

_Natalia._

Those words hovered just behind her eyelids when she closed them in pain. Remembering physically hurt, it was something her brain was no longer wired to do. They had taken that from her, perhaps she would take their lives from them. Rage, red and vicious, sat grinning on her shoulders and told her to find them and rip their throats out. As to why she was so angry, so filled with hatred, she didn’t know. She had to remember. Steve Rogers had called her Bucky, had told her she was his friend.

She had to find out if that was true or if it was just another trick. A tactic to get her back where she belonged, in her place, on a mission, on orders, frozen.

There was nothing like that cold.

They never asked her if it hurt to be frozen and then quickly thawed. The ice ripped off the top layer of her skin every time they removed her from the chamber which was like a coffin. Cramped so that her muscles were weak under itchy and burning skin. Cold that burned. Not even the sound of her screaming as they heated and regrew it made them stop.

Her handlers didn’t care about her skin so why should she? Eventually she didn’t care about the agony but that didn’t mean that she didn’t still feel it. It just didn’t matter all that much. Pain was useless to her. Pain did not help her complete her missions.

The red headed woman was gone and she felt a heavy weight sink into her chest. She wished she hadn’t left. The soldier knew she could track her, could ask her why her face made her chest hurt. But she didn’t.

Her first mission was Rogers.

He was the greatest mystery and the greatest lure. She hadn’t killed him, she had saved him from drowning and now she was on reconnaissance. To find out why he was suddenly the most important thing to her.

The soldier wasn’t sure why she believed him.

The exhibit at the Smithsonian had a Bucky Barnes. He had her face but the newsreels and history said he was a man. Was Captain America’s best friend. Steve’s best friend. Something about that was wrong though. She couldn’t remember if Bucky was even her name but she knew that exhibit was wrong. History had missed all the important things.

The sun through the leaves cast dappled shadows all over her arms and legs helping her blend in. She waited for Steve and his companion, Samuel Thomas Wilson alias Falcon, to leave the cemetery with enough of a head start for her to follow them discretely.

This was something she was good at, stalking prey, hunting a target. She could follow them unnoticed forever if she needed to. Answers wouldn’t come that way though. All of the things wrong with her head wouldn’t let her ask Steve. She couldn’t just walk up to his door and ask him. That wasn’t part of protocol. That wasn’t mission standard. Maybe if she followed him he would tell her things with his actions instead.

No matter how much she wanted to know why she knew him she was still the soldier. Questions only half formed and no answers awaited her when she reached for them. There were big gaping gray gaps that she fell into anytime she tried to remember Steve. Remember what he was like, how he sounded, what they did together when she was Bucky. If she even was Bucky.

Sometimes she dreamed.

Sleeping up in a tree or the crevice of an overpass, her robotic arm clamped down to keep her in place.

High up on a building roof watching Steve go for a jog with Sam around the track. Passing and saying things playfully as he did.

Shadowing them as they went out to get a massive bag of double bacon cheeseburgers at a burger joint called Gettysburger.

After they left she bought two for herself and hurriedly found a deserted park to eat them in. Scarfing them down in huge bites with minimal chewing. The grease and blood ran down her face and she barely tasted them until they were fully in her stomach. She was still hungry. That could wait now that it wasn’t as urgent anymore.

Somehow she didn’t forget to eat. Even though she knew in her fur that she could go days without eating if she had to. Instinct inside her reminded her to eat and drink at least something every few hours. It might have been training or it might have been the beast but whatever it was she wouldn’t die of starvation.

This time she found them at the Veteran’s Center downtown. On the way there she willed herself to remember where Gettysburger was and what that double bacon cheeseburger tasted like. If she could remember that then she would reward herself by camping out just over Sam’s fence tonight.

Closer than she had ever dared to get to Steve since pulling him from the river.

It was easy to pretend to look at brochures in the hallway and listen for Sam’s voice as he talked to the people gathered there. One by one different voices started to tell their stories about war. They talked about it like it was something you could leave. Like they shouldn’t have brought the fight back here with them.

The soldier knew better than that.

Everything was war, that was what she was made of and that was all she was good for.

Then Steve spoke up and her hearing sharpened in on his strong voice.

“I think about it every day. It might not be the same war any of you remember fighting but it was still a war. For as long as I’ve been gone it seems like America has been at war. I’m tired of war but I’m still a soldier. There’s battles that still need fighting and people that still need looking out for.”

Unconsciously her feet started propelling her down the hall, towards his voice.

“We have all lost people we love to war. Either on the battlefield, here in our homes, or even the person looking back at us in the mirror. The best thing I can think to do is to live one day at a time and laugh again. I might have to go fight some more but at least I can come home to a place of love and compassion. That’s worth fighting for, to me anyway.”

She almost turned the corner into the room full of chairs where he was standing at the podium but the round of applause stopped her. Snapping out of whatever trance she had fallen into she darted into the women’s restroom and slammed the door.

Her heart was beating so hard it felt like she was going to chuck it up. She tried to turn on the faucet but there was no handle. It turned on as she put her hand up to feel for a button and she jumped. After watching it run out she waved her hand in front of it again and then stuck her head half-way under it. Using her hands she smoothed the water over her face and long greasy hair. It was cold but at least it didn’t hurt her flushed, panicked face.

The soldier gripped the sink basin with both hands. The glove covering her metallic one squeaked at the pressure as she tried to slow her heart rate down.

A flush from the end stall startled her and she froze. Every bit of her tensed and poised for attack. A tall muscular black woman with braided hair came out and saw her.

The soldier waited for her to leave after washing her hands but she didn’t. Her voice was soft and was far enough from her for the soldier not to lash out with her hands.

“Hey are you okay? Do you need anything? I used to get the shakes like that every time someone ran over the manhole cover in front of my apartment. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to but know I won’t judge you.”

She came closer and the soldier jerked away but all she did was place a paper card on sink next to her as she left. It was a soft powdery purple and read; “Doctor Leah Samson, psychiatrist.” with her phone number, email address, and office address with hours.

She didn’t know what a psychiatrist was exactly but she would look it up.

That woman, Leah, had been nice to her. For no reason other than she saw she was in distress.

There were people who were nice for no reason then. Who did things for no personal gain or who weren’t on a mission. She suspected Steve was one of those people too.That’s why she needed to know everything.

It was smart to stay in the bathroom a while longer before slipping out of the building and trying to find Steve and Sam again. She huddled into one of the stalls, pulled her feet up onto the toilet seat with her, and waited.

On the way back to Sam’s home she remembered where Gettysburger was so she stopped there and ordered six double cheeseburgers this time. The cashier had looked at her strangely when she didn’t take her ten dollars in change. Instead of putting the money away she dropped it into the tip jar and he seemed happy after that.

He stopped watching her. She got her burgers and fled. The last thing she needed was to be noticed. Every time that happened she put her objective in jeopardy. And even though she hadn’t finished her last mission she had a new one now. One that she had chosen. That felt misshapen and wrong in her thoughts but she had to know. Steve Rogers had her answers.

Standard operating procedure for that dictated the use advanced interrogation techniques. But something large and undefinable had risen up in her mind and told her she could not torture Steve. Not ever.

Slipping back into her tactical leathers out of her nondescript navy hoodie she sat in the bushes just beyond the fence to Sam’s backyard and absently ate the burgers.

This time she could taste them better and found that she liked them, especially the part that must have been the bacon. Maybe there was a place somewhere near she could just get some of that.

The soldier would have to look it up when she went to look up what a psychiatrist was at the nearest library.

Being a master assassin, she had removed all the wrappers from the burgers because they crinkled too loudly, before she had hunkered down. When the burgers were finished she simply wiped her greasy hands on her black cargo pants. There was a clear view into the back of Sam’s kitchen and his bedroom window from the slats in between the fence. If she concentrated, her hearing could pick up their voices and some words.

She rarely tuned her hearing that close to the beast’s though because it took such focus that she often lost track of the rest of her surroundings. It was a deadly mistake she couldn’t afford to make. Sam and Steve appeared to be going to bed.

They both climbed into Sam’s bed and that’s when she noticed they were anything but tired. The soldier held her breath as she listened to Steve’s go ragged. Sam was saying words of encouragement and the sounds of flesh slapping against flesh were deafening. She knew what they were doing.

Molten heat pooled between her legs as she listened to them fuck. The feeling wasn’t unpleasant but she wasn’t sure what to do with it. It was frightening how much of a reaction she was getting from this. A desperate part of her wanted to see what Steve would do if she walked in while Sam was fucking him. What would he say? Why did she care? Fucking was something rabbits and dogs did. And wolves.

She swallowed around the dry ball of burger that was suddenly back in her throat. That same panicked feeling from earlier had started to creep back over her flesh. The only way to stop it was to tune out the moans and grunts they were making and curl up into the tightest ball she could inside the bushes. Nothing to focus on but the pinch of her mechanical arm as its fingers dug into her calf.

They stopped soon after that but she stayed curled up until sunrise and she heard them walking around the kitchen again.

Then Bucky ran away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay another update! This part had Steve and Bucky POVs and Sam is next. There's a lot that happens in his chapter that has to do with the plot later on ie HYDRA. The fic is currently 46k and counting. My beta is awesome and she deserves 10,000 hugs. I am chicagoartnerd on tumblr so follow there if you want little bits of meta, stucky feels, and various text posts of me being sad about Bucky Barnes.


	4. There's Only 3 Things for Sure: Taxes, Death, and Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Steve visit some of Bucky's old haunts while Bucky shadows them. HYDRA finally makes another appearance.

 

**_Shelby County Public Library, Shelbyville, Indiana, July 2014_ **

 

Sam watched Steve shuffle through reels of old news tape and stacks of census papers. They knew that Bucky was born here in 1917 but that was about it. At least that was some where to start even if none of this information meant anything to her now in her current state.

“You do know this is probably all digitized now and we could have looked it up in the Library of Congress back in DC right?”

Steve grunted as he picked up another binder full of historical records.

“I know. I just thought she might come here. Either remembering it or on instinct.”

This hadn’t been their first stop on what Sam was dubbing the “ Up All Night to Get Bucky” roadtrip. They had revisited Steve and Bucky’s old tenement building in Brooklyn to look for her although it had been torn down ages ago and was now a three star steak joint owned by Gordon Ramsay.

After that to the site of her mother’s old flat in Hell’s Kitchen. It was still there but no one had seen anyone matching Bucky’s description around.

Sam had a different theory as to where she was. If he needed to remember who he was he would go looking for family or friends. The only one of those left alive was Steve. Sam was pretty sure that eventually, wherever she was, she would find him.

Steve on the other hand wasn’t so convinced since it had been months and she hadn’t approached him. So they had set out on the road together. If locations in the U.S. didn’t pan out Steve was ready to take them overseas to England, Germany, and Austria.

Sam knew he was hoping to find her before something bad happened. Either to her or someone who did the wrong thing while she was around. He was pretty sure it was already too late for that. All of Bucky’s life post Steve had been something bad.

Steve still had hope so Sam was with him. Wherever he wanted to look for her, Sam would follow him. He was his friend and his lover and he was Captain America. If one of those wasn’t enough for him to haul ass around the country looking for Bucky, he had three good reasons now. Sam cracked his knuckles and looked at Steve from the corner of his eyes.

“Well we can certainly ask around to see if anyone has seen her. Did you find her old address yet?”

Steve sighed in frustration and ran a hand through his short dishwater blonde hair.

“No not yet. And don’t act like you don’t enjoy this old fashioned, nose to the ground gumshoeing.”

Sam grinned at him and plopped down next to him picking up an ancient looking tome containing county tax records from the early 1900s.

“Tell me what we’re looking for then _Detective_ Rogers.”

Sam loved that dimpled grin of his. He loved it even more when he smiled while kissing him. He hummed against Steve’s lips and his smiled widened. When they broke apart Steve opened another book and tapped the cover of Sam’s.

“Look for George M. Barnes and Winifred C. Barnes nee Harrison.”

Sam wasn’t as fast at skimming the pages as Steve was but it wasn’t unpleasant to be wedged next to his muscled arms in a secluded corner of the research and records section. He had spent hours camped out, hovering in the shivering upper air currents, waiting for a target to come into range before. More than once. People forgot how cold it was once you got up off the ground. Reading old documents in a dusty library with Steve was preferable to that.

Although nothing quite topped the exhilaration of flying through the air, banking at top speed and pulling Gs, then rolling out of it higher into the sky. Blue in every direction as you spun. Laughing and screaming and being free.

There were probably only two other people still alive he could talk to about what that felt like. One of them had a robot suit worth several million dollars and the other was a Norse god. His life had been a wild ride since meeting Steve, but he wouldn’t have had it any other way. He’d gotten some of the thrill of life back. And he’d found someone to share it with.

He kept reading until his eyes started to blur and his stomach angrily protested. Just when he was about to quit he found something.

“Hey what about a Rebecca Proctor nee Barnes? This is a marriage license for 1953. Says she moved here a few years before that after the war.”

Steve stopped and marked his page with a purple post-it before he crowded Sam over to look at his.

“Bucky had three younger siblings but the only one she ever talked about was a little sister named Becky that she thought had died. Or at least that’s what she had always believed. She said that’s why her mom moved with her and her two brothers to New York City, that her dad and Becky died of influenza. Is she still alive? Does she have an address in town?”

They went to the computers for that. The obituaries quickly told them that she had passed away in 2007 but had a son and a daughter. The son had two children who were still in town, Scott and Kimberly Proctor. Bucky’s grand-nephew and grand-niece. Sam wasn’t sure what to say.

It was like looking into someone else’s sealed personnel file. They were learning things about Bucky she hadn’t even known when she had been consciously herself. That felt like trespassing but Steve had to know. Had to find her at any cost. Sam murmured quietly at Steve.

“Should we go talk to them?”

Steve stared at the computer screen a long time before answering Sam.

“No. Bucky didn’t know her sister was alive so even if she remembered Shelbyville she wouldn’t go looking for her. Let’s not burden them with what’s going on. When we get Bucky back, she can decide if she wants to get to know them.”

Sam nodded solemnly.

“Another dead end.”

Steve chuckled and shook his head.

“No such thing. I’ve found some information that was leaked by Natasha, it talked about a HYDRA installation near Fairfield. Which I found out was where an Allegheny Airlines plane crashed in 1969. We should go check it out.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at that. Steve had been digging into Wikipedia again it seemed.

“Alright but first we’re getting something to eat. And don’t try and tell me you’re not starving Mr. super serum metabolism.”

Steve punched him lightly in the shoulder, well lightly for him, as they thanked the research librarian, Mrs. Womack, on the way out. She was an aging black woman with steel gray hair and bifocals on a chain. The picture of the knowledgeable librarian, she smiled and made a shooing motion with her hands as they left. Sam just grinned widely and put his arm around Steve’s broad shoulders companionably as they left.

They hopped back in Sam’s silver Escalade and peeled out of the parking lot. The one Steve had been nice enough to give him after Bucky totally trashed his previous ride. Sam wasn’t holding a grudge over it so much as he was trying not to be scared shitless of her. She was one of the most efficiently ruthless people he had ever met. And he was a soldier.

It was fuckig terrifying that HYDRA could take a person and do that to them. Make them into a literal lupine killing machine, complete with robot arm. He was afraid of Bucky even though Steve remembered her as she was and gushed about her. Sam had a little more of an outside perspective because he never knew Bucky but he had met The Winter Soldier.

She had ripped the steering wheel from his car sending them all careening into traffic then later pulled him out of the sky with one hand. Bucky was a terrifying figure now. But he also agreed with Steve, he was afraid for her too. If HYDRA did have her back he wasn’t sure what exactly they would do to make her forget Steve now. Whatever inhumane process it was it would be extremely emotionally manipulative/damaging. That was HYDRA’s MO when it came to her, over and over.

Sam shivered and tried to direct his thoughts in a happier direction. He buckled his seatbelt and locked the doors.

Steve had wanted to bring his bike but Sam had insisted on a vehicle with a roof and doors. He was no superhuman and the thought of being road kill after a surprise ambush going 70 didn’t appeal to him. Better to be prepared than dead. Also, riding behind Cap with his new shield, courtesy of Stark Industries, poking him in the face was less than comfortable. He was practical like that.

Instead the shield hung out with his new wings in the trunk and the back seat of the escalade was for snacks and sex. Steve had to eat something every hour or so, his metabolism was a crucible. It made Sam wonder if Bucky was the same.

They had stocked up on Clif bars, cashew heavy trail mix, and Korean BBQ pork jerky at Sam’s Club before they left. He had also insisted on frosted animal crackers and Doritos. Steve had rolled his eyes and mentioned artificial dyes and processed sugars but he had eaten them with Sam without complaints. Compromise was the bedrock of any relationship and both of them were happy with the results. Snacks then sex. It was a winning combination that would have been harder to score on Steve’s Harley. Not that Sam wasn’t willing to try.

They eventually pulled into the parking lot of a Ruby Tuesdays and were quickly seated. They weren't on the government’s payroll any more but at least their combined savings meant they wouldn’t go hungry. Sam had more than a little bit saved up from single living even if he did live in the suburbs of D.C.

Tony Stark had been trying to get them both to move into what he was now calling The Avengers Tower. He claimed to have a separate floor for each of them if they wanted it. After Steve had turned him down flat Tony had started hounding Sam. Which was the right approach because a penthouse apartment in downtown NYC, a Stark expense account, and the ability to help people on a wider scale sounded tempting. He was still going to follow Steve wherever he led though. And if he didn’t feel like they should join up with Stark then he wouldn’t. But damn did Tony make him think real hard about it.

They ordered the biggest meals on the menu and started to joke around about fine dining.

“When we get back to D.C. I’m gonna have to take you to Freddy’s BBQ joint. Some of the best ribs in the city. We’re also pretty close to Kansas City, relatively speaking, so if we do end up there we’re gonna have to get all the Q.”

They talked a lot about music, sports, and movies and how they had all changed since Steve’s time. But mostly they talked about how different food was. How there was more of it yet less variety. How everything was made with preservatives and dyes and additives now. How all the artificial sweeteners since Sweet and Low tasted strange. Food was important to both of them. They bonded over it like they did their love of running and baseball.

Steve grinned and reached across the table to weave his hand into Sam’s. He took it and squeezed. Other people in the booth next to them and the table across from them stared. Sam didn’t remove his hand though. He was dating Captain America so if anybody wanted to give him shit they both could handle it, even if it had been ingrained him from an early age to try and blend in, to not cause any trouble. His sister had listened and his brother hadn’t. Instead of thinking too hard about it he focused solely on what Steve was saying.

“Back in Brooklyn there was a Cuban family who had a food cart down the block. Mrs. Soto would get up at four in the morning to stir a pot full of whatever cut of pork they could afford and mojo spices. They made the best fried sweet potatoes, Maduros. I could never finish a whole one by myself so Buck would eat hers and then finish my extra.”

He looked like he could still see her there smiling and wiping hot drippings off his chin. Sam squeezed his hand harder. And he came back with a bittersweet smile.

“Now I’m really hungry for a Cuban Sandwich.”

Sam ran his thumb over the top of Steve’s hand and wrist.

“Well you’re gonna have trouble finding one of those in Indiana but that might be easier to do when we get back to D.C.”

“Or we could go to New York City.”

Sam let his surprise show and Steve was about to say something when the waitress dropped their plates loudly on the table in front of them. She backed away from them both like she had been burned and her face was pinched and uncomfortable. Steve didn’t know what was going on but Sam did. The big stuff didn’t bother him as much anymore, he could let it roll of of him, it was the little instances like this that hurt him. Chipping away at him day after day.

“Hey are you okay? Is everything alright?”

The waitress tried to smooth out her look of disgust and addressed Steve.

“Everything’s fine. I’ll go get your check.”

And then she practically fled the table. Sam slowly let go of Steve’s hand and watched as Steve’s eyes narrowed at the people who were now all staring at them angrily from the other tables. Carefully Sam unwrapped his silverware and started to eat his lackluster enchiladas. Steve was still trying to stare down the other patrons and not touching his massive plate of coconut shrimp.

“Are they racist or homophobic or both? You’ll never really know. Welcome to the future. Have a tiny glimpse of what it’s like being a Queer black man in America.”

Steve looked down at his clenched fists on the table.

“You shouldn’t have to have that happen to you. Nobody should. I-”

Sam cut him off before he could continue.

“The out and out bigots I can handle, at least you know who not to trust. It’s the subtle ones, the ones in suits, the university educated ones, who claim we live in a ‘post-racial’ America you have to look out for.”

Steve looked like he was thinking about it hard and Sam waited to see exactly what he would say while eating some of the cold dry rice on his plate.

“What should I be doing to help support you then?”

Sam grinned. Leave it to Captain America to figure out the right thing to say.

“You can eat your dinner so we can get the hell out of here for starters. The gaudy red atmosphere and angry white people are putting me off dessert.”

He licked his lips after that last part and smirked with satisfaction as Steve’s pupils dilated. Sam snickered as he watched Steve wolf down his now cold meal. In between shoveling fries into his mouth with a fork and chewing he said.

“I’m serious though. Should I be talking policy with some people? Should I go out and lend my support to the groups who are doing protests and activism ?”

Sam did laugh then picturing Cap on the Daily Show or better yet Fox News trying to talk about civil liberties and human rights.

“First things first, get your own house in order and then we can start cleaning up the world.”

Steve stopped eating and nodded seriously at him before finishing off his glass of cherry coke in two gulps. Sam loved him. He was idealistic in a lot of ways and yet it didn’t grate on him. Steve was a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.

Sam just watched him eat and smiled. He could watch Steve do anything really and it would put him at ease. Whether it was eating a banana and making a disgusted face, punching a HYDRA operative ten feet in the air, or sketching the birds that lived in his backyard, everything Steve did was beautiful.

The check came soon afterwards and they didn’t leave the waitress much a tip. Sam wouldn’t stiff her though. No matter how shitty a person she was she still lived on minimum wage and tips. He tried to forget about the waitress and instead wanted to ask Steve why they would be going back to New York instead of D.C. Sam wanted to know if it was because he was considering Tony Stark’s offer. But he put it off. They had to eat dessert after all.

That night at their hotel room they went slow. Like they had all the time in the world to explore each other’s skin with teeth, tongues, lips, and hands.

Steve had more endurance than either one of them knew what to do with. Sam tended to get him worked up with a handjob or a blowjob first and then fuck him. Steve could usually come two or three times in one go if he worked him hard enough. And God was he gorgeous, muscles glistening with sweat, blushing warmly, panting Sam’s name over and over like it was the only word he knew. Maybe it was because he was nearly out of his mind when Sam’s lips slipped from his cock and balls to circle his hole.

The first time that he had rimmed Steve was also the first time he had heard him say “fuck.” Because of that he had tried to at least play with his ass a little every time they made love. He liked hearing Steve let go, pushing him to pure pleasure without restraint.

Steve held back when he fought people, when he trained with people, but Sam didn’t want him to hold back with him. It felt too good to run his slicked up cock from Steve’s ass up along next to his balls and cock. He took both of them in hand and jerked them both off till Steve came with a shout.

He stopped and looked at his bright pink blissed out face. Nearly all of him flushed when Sam touched him, no matter where he touched him, it was like he suddenly grew a sunburn. He took in the expanse of Steve’s muscled chest, blushing pink and covered in a light sheen of sweat. He was wonderful. Then Sam positioned himself at Steve’s opening and waited, pressed against him.

Steve nodded dumbly and Sam put more lube on his cock before slowly pushing in. He was so hot, no matter how many times he fucked Steve or Steve fucked him, into the mattress, couch, floor, back seat of the escalade, it was never enough.

Skin to skin, Steve hips canting up to meet him as his cock leaked between their entwined bodies, his ankles digging in to Sam’s lower back hard enough to leave bruises. All of it was perfect. This time he came first and jerked Steve off with his hands. His still softening dick inside him.

They were both sweaty and exhausted but Sam still blearily got up to go to the bathroom to get a towel to clean them both up with. It was almost a ritual by now. When he came back Steve was already falling asleep. So he didn’t take his time wiping him down like he usually did.

He threw on a pair of black sweatpants to sleep in. Normally he didn’t sleep in anything but boxer briefs because Steve was practically a human furnace. But he wanted to go down the hallway to the Coke machine before he went to bed.

Sam tugged on a white undershirt as he padded barefoot down the flowery carpeted hallway of the Days Inn they were staying at. As he punched in the code for the Gatorade he watched something move out of the corner of his eye. He turned just in time to see a woman with long and matted brown hair exit the glass doors into the parking lot. She was a ghost but he knew her. There was no mistaking that silhouette.

He wondered briefly if it was some sort of trap. He now knew with some certainty that she had been following them, probably for a while now. And just now she was choosing to make herself visible to him. Something was going on with her. Why now? Why Sam and not Steve when she didn’t know him? Then again if Steve was wrong then she didn’t know either of them.

After the machine dropped his drink with a dull ker-chunk he bought another one. Then twisted his open as he went outside to the parking lot. There were only three other cars there. Behind them there were rows of trees and bushes that separated the motel from highway 9.

He sat down on the step outside the door and stared into the darkness beyond their parked car.

“Hey man you don’t have to come out if you don’t want to. But if you do I’m here to listen. Also I got you a Coke.”

He held up the plastic bottle, then thinking better of it took it and placed it halfway between him and the trees. He sipped his red Gatorade and watched for movement in the shadows.

It was like she was made of them, one minute there was nothing, then there she was. Dressed all in deep navy as it blended in with the night better than black did. Her fearful blue eyes were burning into his as she crept closer. He could tell she was tense so he didn’t move.

It was like trying to help a feral animal, he had to be patient and slow with her. Otherwise she might maul him. It stopped being much of a metaphor when he remembered she was a werewolf as well.

In one swift movement she crouched and took the bottle in her hand. She stayed squatting there, eye level with him across the parking lot and twisted the bottle top off. Sniffing it she took a swig and made a confused face. Then she took another gulp and swished it around her mouth before drinking half the bottle. They watched each other silently and he was prepared to wait for her to leave before he moved. Then she spoke.

“It doesn’t taste the same.”

Sam watched her stare down, eyes wide with wonder, at the plastic bottle like it was the most important thing in the world.

He cleared his throat.

“Yeah. They used to make it with cane sugar and now they use high fructose corn-syrup. There are still places you can get original Coke though. Mexican groceries for one.”

Her eyes fluttered shut as she drank the rest of the bottle in ecstasy. Gently, she methodically stored it in one of the pockets on her cargo pants.

“I remembered it though. What the old ones used to taste like. There was something else too. It was Steve’s favorite treat. We, we would save to buy one for each of us once every couple months. I had to...it was me. I was there.”

A volatile mix of emotions flickered over her face like a guttering candle and then she was gone.

He had blinked as she vanished. A part of him wondered what had just happened. She was so mixed up it was hard for him to follow. Sam couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to be trapped in her own head like that.

Sam waited another half hour to see if she would come back but she didn’t. Eventually he went back inside and got into bed with Steve. Who rolled over but didn’t wake up as he wrapped an arm around Sam.

So Bucky was still in there.

Sam wanted to be a little cautious of her regardless but he knew there was still the Bucky that Steve loved in her somewhere. And that was enough for him to commit to helping Steve bring her back, no matter how dangerous she was.

She had seemed so fractured, he felt for her. Sam had seen people ripped apart by war and completely remade into minds and bodies that they no longer recognized. Bucky had one of the worst causes of PTSD he had ever seen. She needed help. But also she was still a threat if they didn’t go about giving it to her in the right way. Any sort of institution or non-consensual drug administering would be out of the question.

It was going to be a hard road to walk for her as well as them. Because he was with Steve now. He would do everything he could to help Bucky just like Steve would. Even though it upset him, Sam was sure what had just happened would make Steve happy. Happy probably didn’t cover the half of it actually. Sam knew he wasn’t as excited as Steve but he was actually looking forward to meeting her.

Bucky, not The Winter Soldier.

Anyone that Steve loved and looked up to was someone Sam needed to know. The people in Steve’s life were important to him now. Sam resolved to tell him about his encounter with Bucky in the parking lot in the morning.

They started out bright and early and it was frustrating. No matter how many times he tried to start the conversation it never seemed like the right time to mention his encounter with Bucky the previous night. It had been small and fleeting. Sam didn’t know where they would go to look for her after this if she never showed herself to them again. He kept it to himself for now and scanned the roads and trees for a glimpse of a navy hoodie or a shape made of fur.

Scoping out where the HYDRA installation was located turned out to be harder than they had originally suspected. Fairfield Township wasn’t even a really town. Just a church and a collection of perfectly normal seeming houses. There was no main street with a general store or even a gas station. It didn’t look like the kind of place HYDRA would have a base.

The original town of Fairfield was turned into a reservoir by the government in the late sixties. Since then the population had dwindled to a measly 537. The surrounding towns weren’t much bigger. The whole area was fairly empty.

So you would think that spotting Bucky if she was still following them would have been easier. She was either a master predator or had an invisibility cloak. There was not even a rustle in the grass to indicated she was nearby and watching them. Even though a large alarm in his brain was warning him they were in fact being watched now.

They drove in a circle through the township twice looping back onto Indiana State Road 101 each time. It was better to drive halfway back to Shelbyville just to find somewhere to eat so they booked it out of there.

After they parked to eat their Wendys’ was when it hit him.

A spoonful of frosty halfway to his mouth Sam stopped.

“What if it’s under the lake.”

Steve stopped absently eating fries and turned to face him before he started to nod.

“Brookville Lake was built in the late 60s early 70s right? That would coincide with HYDRA having full access to S.H.I.E.L.D. It was also around the time Zola transferred his consciousness into those computers. If this base is still operational because it’s not officially mentioned anywhere in the correspondence we know for sure was from HYDRA operatives we need to find out what it’s up to now.”

This was starting to sound like a little more of a challenge than he was originally expecting. If they did find something particularly nasty in the base under the man-made lake then he was going to insist Steve get ahold of Natasha, Clint, or maybe even Tony and Dr. Banner. Superpowered backup might be necessary on this one. Bucky didn’t count because Sam had no idea if they could count on her.

They parked Sam’s car two miles upwind in the Quakertown State Recreation Area. The suspected base was probably under the lake since there was nothing but grassland and light forest around it. They moved over flatland and shrub brush towards the forested area surrounding the lake at a quick clip.

There wasn’t as much cover in the area as he would have liked. In the dark, with nothing but the stars and rising moon they were close to invisible, he tried to let the exposed feeling go. It still made him jumpy though.

Sam’s instincts as a soldier in a combat zone were kicking in. He had seen a lot more action recently than he had planned. It seemed like Steve had a habit of getting into fights for the little guy. From what Sam knew he had done that even when he had been a little guy. And although he had gotten out of the army for a good reason it felt good to be back. Out fighting for something again.

Eventually the relative cover of the forest encased them as they wound their way towards the shore of the massive lake.

He wasn’t sure what Steve was looking for exactly but he stopped for a quick glance across the black waters of the lake. It was then he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

The feeling of being watched was heavier in the air here, he turned around. Right as he did a large, dark, fur covered shape dropped from the trees. The werewolf, standing on its hind legs, towered over him as he activated his wings. More than ready to fly Steve away from here. Then he noticed its uncanny chrome plated arm.

Both he and Steve stood in place as Bucky slowly stalked closer to them.

She halted only a few feet away, so close Sam could feel the massive amount of body heat her huge, muscular, furry body was giving off in waves. Bucky snuffled and let out a rank hot puff of air in his face.Then she turned her massive head and teeth filled snout towards Steve.

He looked up at her in awe, grinning, and put his palm out for her sniff it like she was a big dog. Instead she took it swiftly with her metal hand and licked it with her big pink tongue while rolling her eyes at him.

That expression actually looked really terrifying on a werewolf.

Steve snorted and tried to stifle a laugh. Bucky quickly dropped his hand and retreated. His happiness couldn’t be contained though. Steve was practically bubbling over with it.

They watched her move into the trees but she didn’t go far. Sam didn’t think she was dangerous now. Lost and on edge seemed a better description for the werewolf that was now lurking just out of their reach.

When they didn’t follow she came back towards them and growled low before motioning them with her robotic arm to come with her. They didn’t hesitate this time and they both fought to keep up as she loped through the woods, bobbing and weaving over fallen trees and rocks like she was born to do just that.

There was a large rock formation that was probably full of the fossils the area was famous for. Before their eyes the rocks started to waver like heat haze over asphalt. They all hunkered down behind the tree cover to watch as the rock formation vanished revealing a track-lit paved cavern that moved down into the ground under the lake.

A single black flat bed truck, with a load of something covered in green tarp, exited it. The rock formation reappeared as soon as the truck was bumping along the dirt deer trail towards the main road. Sam twitched as movement happened right next to him.

The bulky dark shape shrunk to a more manageable one. Bucky seemed a lot smaller when he could see her eyes this close. They were clear blue, rimmed with tactical eye black, and were surprisingly vulnerable. Her voice came from next to his right ear in a gruff whisper.

“It doesn’t feel right. Like things crawling under my fur when I wear it. They’re not using carbon nanotubes or video projectors to mask the entrance.”

Steve moved in closer in order to hear her better.

“Then what is it? Some sort of super advanced tech like nanites or?”

Bucky turned grimly to face him.

“No. They’re using a sorceress. A high level one.”

Steve shook his head.

“There’s no such thing as magic.”

Bucky raised a coal-framed sarcastic brow at him.

“Says the fucking super soldier to the werewolf. Magics’ real. I’ve seen it.”

“Thor explained that all the stuff we thought of as magic thousands of years ago is just super advanced alien technology from Asgard.”

Bucky squared her jaw and crossed her arms stubbornly.

“That may be true where he comes from but it’s not true on Earth. Magic is real and it’s deadly. Whatever they’re doing in there with it is bad business.”

Before she could react Steve was hugging her tightly.

“It’s good to have you back Buck.”

She went rigid as a board but slowly melted into him, her awkward skin covered arm patting him on the back. Sam watched her eyes flutter shut in a pained expression of longing before they snapped open to stare him down. He returned her piercing stare with a measured one of his own. She spoke to Steve as she looked at Sam over his shoulder.

“I’m not. Not the way you mean. But I’m trying.”

Steve let her go and took a step back to grin at her radiantly.

“That’s good to hear. That’s just the bees knees.”

Bucky smiled weakly back at him, her mouth a thing limp line, and then they both turned back to look at Sam.

“Don’t look at me. I’m on a covert mission with my 95 year old boyfriend and his werewolf best friend. Who am I to tell somebody that ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’ wasn’t a documentary.”

Both Steve and Bucky didn’t get the reference. Sam wasn’t about to explain because it wasn’t that funny. He grumpily told them both to look it up on Steve’s Stark phone after they got back to the hotel. Sometimes having to explain references was fun because that meant Steve got to see or hear or experience a new thing with him. Other times it wasn’t cause it meant most of his jokes lost their bite.

Getting into the base was suspiciously easy, they followed two more supply trucks that went trundling inside before the barrier slammed shut with no problems. And after winding their way deeper into the massive cavern base they figured out why.

It was absolute chaos inside. Black clad HYDRA agents with semi-automatics strapped to their backs were running all over the place, packing large crates full of oddly shaped black metal pieces and loading them onto the backs of tarp covered flat beds. A large glass domed ceiling, covered in arching steel girders for reinforcement, flickered the deep blue of the lake in the bright white fluorescent lights. There appeared to a count down over the intercom as well. To whatever it was they only had twelves minutes left.

Somehow he suspected all of this panic wasn’t because they had activated some sort of proximity alarm. For some other reason HYDRA was in a hurry to evacuate and presumably destroy this facility. They might not have been the cause of the chaos but they were about to make it a lot worse.

Steve looked over his shoulder and nodded to him. Sam activated the turbines in his wings and rocketed into the air. He managed to take out half a dozen agents before any of them could fire back. Most of them were too busy lifting boxes and working the forklifts full of massive crates.

He dodged some incoming uzi fire and looked down to where Steve was gracefully bashing agents in the head with his rebounding shield. He could handle himself and even though Sam liked watching him fight, he concentrated on taking out several soldiers working a crane.

Glass shattered as he shot through it and killed the two men in the crane cab. He heard the shield clang against something metallic and looked back to see Steve talking down a forklift by himself.

Bucky had vanished.

A sniper’s bullet went sailing through the gap in between Sam’s wing and shoulder to hit a HYDRA agent squarely in the nose, making the back of his head explode in a shower of pink bloody chunks. Sam paused in shock before looking back at Steve who stared back at him for a beat.

Both Sam and Steve turned to see Bucky at the far end of the cavern on top of one of the covered trucks. She raised a single hand in acknowledgment and jumped from the truck to the ground. Steve had shaken off his surprise and was smiling jubilantly at her as she came towards them. The countdown noted nine minutes and twenty eight seconds in a monotonous, genderless voice. Steve spoke up first.

“We should head down the corridors that lead off the side and then come back and check the crates. I’m assuming the countdown is a self-destruct sequence so I’m giving us two minutes to make it out of here.”

Sam nodded and so did Bucky. Steve continued.

“Meet back here in six minutes then.”

At Steve’s instruction all three of them went tearing off down different hallways.

Sam’s, it turned out, led to a mess hall and farther down the munitions room that was empty save for a few rounds of armor piercing bullets and a single hand grenade. All of the walls were concrete painted and varnished a light robin’s egg blue. Big stenciled directions in black paint stood out at chest level on all the walls. They appeared to be mile markers and it made Sam wonder how big this facility actually was.

The miles listed were fourteen by the munitions bunker where the hallway terminated. Handily the corridor was wide enough and high enough for him to fly back to the main cavern. It looked like the guys packing the trucks had been the last of the people left here. No one else was in his hallway at all.

He jumped up onto one of the flat beds and pushed one of the boxes till it smashed to the ground. Sam stared at the strange black metal piece that fell out among a lot of biodegradable packing peanuts. It was perfectly smooth, no metal seams at all, and when he touched it a small green spark jumped from it through his half-gloved fingers. That wasn’t normal metal.

He drew his hand back and decided against trying to take it with them. The piece was too big for him to carry if he needed to haul Bucky or Steve out of the base. Also the metal itself felt wrong, like nails skittering across the back of his neck, the taste of dirt and rust hung heavy in his mouth after touching it. Bucky’s conviction of there being bad magic here didn’t seem like a theory any more.

Just then Steve came running back into the main cavern full of partially loaded trucks.

“Where’s Bucky?”

Sam looked at the entrance to the tunnel she had disappeared down.

“I don’t know but we need to get out of here in the next four minutes otherwise we’ll be the new kings under the mountain.”

Steve huffed a laugh.

“Now that reference I got.”

Sam activated his wings again and started to fly towards the hallway Bucky had taken.

“Really? Then we better go find Thorin.”

The countdown ominously spat out three minutes as Sam ran down the hall with Steve, it was too narrow for him to fly. They came to an open doorway at the end of the hallway and stopped dead in their tracks. Bucky was crouched low to the ground, curled tightly in on herself. Before her on the floor was the body of a strangely gray and emaciated woman.

As Sam moved closer he could see the woman was dead, her sightless amber eyes staring up past the ceiling. At her scalp line the skin was peeled back and there were several electrodes embedded there, spiking out like tiny gold tipped horns. Her entire naked body was covered in a viscous gel-like film.

Bucky was staring at her whispering, “nononononononono.” He didn’t dare touch her but they needed to get out of here fast. Sam turned to Steve and murmured.

“I think she found the high level sorceress.”

Steve did touch Bucky’s shoulder. She whipped around and grabbed his arm hard enough to make him wince, which meant it was hard enough to pulverize bone.

“Buck its me. We have to get out of here, the whole place is about to come down around our ears.”

Her wide eyes were childlike and full of fear in their sunken black rimmed sockets.

“Steve?”

He pulled her to his chest and then lifted her up into his arms like she was weightless. She clung to him and buried her face in the crook of his shoulder while mumbling “Steve.”

Now was not the time for an emotional breakdown but Steve was handling it as well as could be expected in their current situation. And it wasn’t like Bucky could pick and choose when the trauma would overwhelm her. They couldn’t wait for Steve to coax Bucky back to a functional state. They had to leave now.

Steve looked at him with pain in his expression and held Bucky closer to his chest.

Then they were running down the corridor.

They had less than a minute left and as soon as they were in the main cavern Sam activated his wings and picked both of them up. It felt like their combined weight was going to rip all the ligaments in his shoulders and he yelled as they soared out of the cavern exit. He wasn’t sure how he managed but they all went soaring at top speed out of the base through a 10ft tall gap that had opened up in the rock pile. They landed near the trees in a not so graceful heap.

The rock formation that had hidden the door collapsed and the ground shook. Sam turned to look at the lake and saw the water level dip and then come back up momentarily. That was the only indication there was no longer a HYDRA base at Brookville Lake. He rolled over and retracted his now bent right wing.

Bucky was whimpering slightly and still clinging to Steve. He was holding her fiercely and didn’t look like he was about to let her go, ever. His pleading eyes met Sam’s over her shoulder and Sam’s heart sank a little. This was gonna be messy.

But then love always was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of my favorite chapters but it was the one I was most nervous about writing as I don't know how to write Sam as well as Nat, Steve, and Bucky. But I want more Sam. All of the Sam. Sam is so great.
> 
> Hey all of you who are actually reading this! Thank you so much for doing so. This fic is one of my favorites that I have ever written so it's always wonderful to see others appreciate it. Thanks to my betas, all two of you now, and I'm still cranking out fic. This monster is now 50k. And still going. Probably for another 15 or 20k wow.
> 
> I'm chicagoartnerd on tumblr so if you want fic related updates, Bucky Barnes feels, and artwork go follow me over there.


	5. She Rings Like a Bell Through The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha makes contact with someone who's intimately familiar with magic to ask for a favor. And we finally get to see what really happened in Budapest.

 

**_The Violet Hour, Wicker Park Chicago, Illinois, August 2014_ **

 

The bar was packed with people and all of the high backed leather chairs were filled with young hipsters in their finest 1920s style tube dresses and smoking jackets. Natasha wasn’t dressed in the bright creams and pastels around her. She was wearing an all black cocktail dress and wickedly pointy leather boots as she made her way through the violet curtains towards the roaring marble fireplace.

The chatter around her began to die down as she slunk closer, the air rippled and undulated, the people around her began to disappear. Until there was only one person sitting in a high backed chair in front of the fire.

As she approached the figure turned her head and pushed some of her curling white bob out of her face. Her face was young, beautiful, and doll-like and if anyone around her could have actually seen her they would have thought she was trying to imitate Daenerys Targaryen. She was wearing a diaphanous greek style violet dress and looked every inch of what she was.

A sorceress.

Nat sat down across from her in the empty chair seated across from her and took a drink of the Old Fashioned that was waiting for her there. Clea raised a thick white eyebrow at the action, shrugged and took a drink of her Charm & Audacity, the fresh smell of Green Chartreuse washed over them both.

“What can I do for you Agent Romanoff?”

Her blue eyes were narrowed and cat-like over the rim of her glass, white will-o-wisps started to dance around her free hand as she tapped it impatiently against the leather arm of the chair.

“It’s just Natasha now but I’m sure you’ve seen that on the news. I have a favor to ask.”

Clea smiled and took the grapefruit wedge from her drink, licked the raspberry brandy from it and then carelessly disintegrated it with a tiny burst of white flames. Nat tried not to twitch every time she used her powers, it was an unnecessary display of force. She could feel the massive pressure of her power all around them, soaking into the very fabric of reality, it was heady and Nat fought to keep herself from falling into it.

When Clea made no move to speak Nat stiffened and then let her irises turn the color of blood. It was like being raised from deep under water. She could see and hear the other people around them now but they still couldn’t see her or Clea. Also she could see the tendrils of Clea’s power that stopped right before her boots and moved around her, never touching her. Clea sighed and gestured at Nat’s red-tinged eyes.

“No need for that I know perfectly well what you are and you obviously know what I am. What is it you want?”

“I want to learn better mastery of my thrall.”

That did get a reaction from her that wasn’t coy and sultry. Her face hardened and her eyes glowed almost white with energy.

“And what would you want to know that for?”

Nat hated it, her skin crawled at the thought of it, regardless this was something she needed to do. It was part of her atonement. It was a part of who she wanted to become.

She lowered the shields guarding her mind, both innate and the ones she had constructed over the years, and let Clea see her. Everything she needed to know. Clea’s head snapped back like she had slapped her and she rubbed her snowy temples gingerly.

“You could have done that a bit more delicately you know but I believe you. Why did you come to me though, instead of Stephen?”

She had been expecting that question. Stephen Strange was the Sorcerer Supreme of earth and he was located much closer to her in Greenwich Village. He was also a friend of Tony Stark’s and a colossal condescending asshole.

“For much the same reason you left him I imagine. I don’t want a man like that in my mind and we would have to become quite intimate in order for me to learn what I want to.”

Clea nodded thoughtfully then finished the last two sips of her drink.

“It won’t be easy and it will probably take longer than you are thinking. Also what will you give me in return?”

Nat smiled dangerously at that.

“One favor owed.”

Clea’s eyes grew large.

“Your name is worthless right now. What makes you think that will be enough for all you are asking of me?”

Nat shrugged and downed the rest of the whiskey in her hand.

“My name is the least of my resources that would be at your disposal. Do we have an accord?”

She stuck out her hand and Clea took it, the heatless fire in the fireplace roared up ominously and Nat felt a bolt of energy, like a tiny electric shock travel up through her arm straight into her heart.

“We do.”

With that they got up to leave the bar, Nat was expecting her to teleport her away but instead they walked out to Damen and took the 77 bus all the way across town to Boystown.

Clea owned a modern looking brownstone walk up on Seminary with a neatly manicured lawn and a head-height wrought iron fence. When Clea unlocked the door and let them both into her entryway a beautiful Indian woman with a heart shaped face, slightly crooked nose, and a braid of silky black hair down her back poked her head out of the kitchen and said.

“Are you hungry love? There is still some daal left.”

Clea smiled at her indulgently and gestured to Nat.

“Is there enough for our guest Natasha as well or should I heat up some of the risotto from last night?”

The other woman’s deep brown eyes locked on her and she felt the gentle caress of an exploratory magical touch. Then it was gone and the other woman ducked back into the kitchen.

“There should be plenty, there always is when I make it. Rice is still in the cooker.”

And then she disappeared down another hallway with two doors in it.

“I was expecting it to be bigger on the inside.”

Clea snorted and spooned some daal into her bowl before going to the rice cooker and putting a large scoop on top. She motioned for Nat to follow her lead.

“Not all of us use our magic for grandeur like Stephen does. Topaz and I have enough space here. Only our work rooms are extra-dimensional the rest of the flat is as we bought it.”

Nat started to blow on the spoon of her still hot daal when Topaz came bounding back into the room. She placed a large tome on the table that made the silverware and water glasses on it jump.

“This might be a good place to start. Lycaon was one of the first after all. Also if you want any bedroom advice feel free to hit me up. My first boyfriend Jack was a werewolf.”

Topaz winked at Nat. Clea pinked up at that and looked at Topaz with exasperation but Nat just smiled sadly at her.

“Thanks but we’re a long way off from that. She’s....she’s been through a lot.”

Topaz’s slightly teasing grin was replaced with a serious nod.

“I’ll help anyway I can. Both of us will. I didn’t want to pry too deeply because that’s rude but from what I gleaned off surface thoughts you’ve been through a lot as well.”

Nat shook her head.

“It’s not about me. I want to learn to rebuild someone’s mind not tear it down, for her.”

Topaz looked over at Clea and then wrapped one of her arms around her shoulders, the other went in to play with her white hair.

“It is about you though. To learn the kind of empathetic healing telepathy you want to you have to first heal yourself. That’s just how it works.”

“I’m fine.”

It was out of her mouth before she could stop it. Both of them looked at her with sympathy and she cringed. After they finished eating Clea showed her to her room. It was cream colored and airy. Inside was a queen bed, dresser, closet, and a television propped up on a stand in the corner. All of the furniture was light brown with earth tone accents, the comforter on the bed was olive green.

This room was meant to be a relaxing space. Even the window looking out on the backyard had a view of white and yellow rose bushes. She flopped on the bed and let herself bounce a little. The white ceiling fan above her sat motionless.

She should have been back in Washington or New York. Dealing with the fallout from S.H.I.E.L.D. Meeting with Clint or Hill to figure out how to move forward. Or worse yet fending off Tony Stark’s repeated efforts to get her to move in with him.

Well not just him and not just her, the newly reconstructed Avengers Tower had room for the whole team and then some. But still she liked her freedom.

Having a sarcastically British AI watching her every move. Especially while she was at home and just wanted to sit around watching “Face Off” in sweat pants didn’t sound ideal. Yet here she was about ready to let two extremely powerful sorceresses mess around with her mind so she could help someone she still cared about for some reason.

Privacy shouldn’t have been that high up on her list of priorities anymore.

The book that Topaz had given her was a massive leather bound behemoth about the first werewolves in Greece. It was interesting if slightly wordy as it was written entirely in olde German, which she was just a tad rusty in. Before she knew it her eyes were drooping shut and she was falling asleep. Curled up protectively around the book in the middle of the too soft bed.

Nat awoke to a black cat with burning green eyes staring at her from over the side of the bed. She got up and stretched before rummaging in the dresser. It was eerily full of clothes from her house that she hadn’t packed. Fucking magic. Sighing she got dressed and scratched the cat above its’ tail as it wound its way in between her legs purring.

Clea was sitting in the front room on the couch reading from an iPad while a cup of steaming tea floated two feet above the ground by her other hand. Nat guessed she was just going to have to get used to seeing stuff like that all the time while she was here. Clea looked up and smiled at her, the floating tea drifted to her lips so she could take a drink and then she actually lowered it onto the end table next to the couch.

“Good morning. I see you’ve met Topaz’s familiar Panna. She’s not an early riser so usually it’s just Panna and I this time of morning. Would you like some tea?”

Nat shook her head no.

“I want to get this over with.”

Clea picked up her tea with her hand this time and took another sip.

“We should really wait for Topaz. This kind of training goes better if you have a back up psychic.”

Exasperated Nat went into the kitchen and poured herself some English breakfast. She came back and sat on the other end of the couch. Panna jumped up between her and Clea and settled into a cat doughnut. She glanced at the article Clea was reading on her iPad. It was from the New York Times and it was about Tony Stark speaking on behalf of Supernaturals at the senate hearings. She took a swig of her steaming tea and grimaced, coffee was much more her style.

“I thought technology didn’t agree with magic. What’s with the iPad?”

Clea set it down on her lap and began to scratch Panna around his neck and under his chin. He started to purr loudly.

“More like magic doesn’t agree with technology, as far as I know practioners of the arts can use tech like the advanced stuff Stark makes with no problem but the minute they try to use magic on it their abilities backfire. I can use e-Readers so long as I don’t try to levitate or teleport them anywhere.”

That was an important piece of information. If she needed to go up against a magic user in the future it might be good to get Stark to work on some tech based containment fields and tasers. She put her hand gently on Panna and let his purrs roll through her.

Now wasn’t the time to be thinking about how to take out Clea, Topaz, and people like them, if she needed to. Like Clea said she was going to have to focus on excising her own demons if she wanted to help Bucky with hers. She must have drifted off because when she opened her eyes both Panna and Clea had disappeared and her tea was cold.

Nat padded down the hallway that some how seemed longer, the door at the end of it creaked open into absolute darkness. It was like a solid wall made of inky water, there was no light in it.

There was no hesitation. With eyes wide open she stepped through the doorway.

 

_**Buda Castle Quarter, Budapest, Hungary, August 2001** _

 

“Fucking vampires!”

The black waters of the Danube were lit with a thousand city lights as they zoomed past it on her motorcycle. Clint whipped around entirely again to fire another ultra-violet strobe arrow at the roving cloud of rippling black that was the vampyr chasing them. The Buda Castle fortifications stood out, its massive dome was a beacon against the night sky as Nat wove along side streets trying to avoid tipping them both over into a storefront or the river.

The arrow struck the vampyr with a flash of white hot sunlight, it let out a shriek that cracked the nearby building windows and Clint cursed again. Nat was doing her best to keep them in the humming glow of the street lights while Clint shot electric and UV light arrows at them. She hit the gas avoiding several small smart cars and a truck. They didn’t lose the creature for long though, she turned her head to see it running alongside the bike, a whirl of thin black shrouds and glowing red eyes.

With her right hand she jammed her taser gauntlet into where its face likely was and zapped it with several thousand volts. It flew back gargling angrily and they left it in the dark of the alleys they were winding down. She heard Clint grunt as another vampyr came from the darkness and bounced off her rear tire. The Neo-Gothic spires and crenellations of the buildings around them contained enough shadows to hide thousands of vampyrs.

They had to get out of the Castle district.

Clint shot another arrow at it and this time it landed with an empty ozone filled sizzle. The vampyr shrieked and exploded in a cloud of fine dust. He stored his bow then shifted so he was curled against her back once more.

“I think we lost the damn things.”

“You mean damned things and not for long. What’s the fastest route towards Andrássy út?”

He radioed in for coordinates and gave her swift, efficient directions interspersed with swears. She was used to it by now. Working with Clint, not with being hunted by vampyrs. That was something she never got used to. There were shadows waiting for her there and they held uncomfortable questions with even more deadly answers. Russia was a cloud over her head and a stain of unending red. Nat tended not to think about it.

They needed to be in the center of Budapest to meet up with their mole and coincidentally it was also the brightest part of the entire city. If they could get there then it would be a lot harder for the vampyrs hunting them to shadowshift. Sometimes she saw all of the things they could do that she couldn’t and she wished she was a full vampyr.

Then again all she had to do was see their ravenous eyes, then the wish evaporated. Regardless being able to shadowshift would have made her nearly impossible to detect and stop as a spy, not that she wasn’t already. Oh well.

They slowed down as they entered the avenue, it was packed with people at four star restaurants and couples walking and talking. The neo-renaissance mansions along the left of the street were lit with arching lights. The whole avenue was almost as bright as daylight.

“Aww why don’t you ever take me out anywhere nice when we’re not on a mission?”

Clint liked to eat, and so did she. He was being melodramatic and sarcastic as per usual. She played along usually but now she wanted to see if he had the guts to follow through.

“That’s because you have no manners. If you want me to take you out you’re going to have to wear a tie. Not a clip on either.”

He started against her back but instead of pulling away he leaned in closer to her left ear.

“That’s no fair. Ties hate me almost as much as loafers. Can we compromise with a suit jacket and some jeans? I’m trying here Nat but you will never tame the wild bachelor inside of me.”

She did snort at that as she continued to drive them slowly through the crowded street.

“Eto ne yedinstvennoye, chto vnutri vas, chto nuzhno ukroshcheniye.”

He put on a mock indignant voice still directly in her ear. It was surprisingly sexy.

“Hey! I understood most of that! Like maybe half of it.”

“V samom dele?”

“Yes really! And we’re in Hungary. It’s probably best not to whip out your casual Russian schicht.”

Nat was about to respond when they rolled past the newly finished House of Terror. Instead she nodded solemnly at all of the portraits of the victims of communism and fascism outside the museum’s walls. She had a hand in all of that.

That was her burden to bear. He must have noticed a change in her posture of breathing as they passed because Clint purposefully interrupted her thoughts, he knew how deep she could sink into herself.

“Hey I think that’s it. Although, I could be wrong, as almost everything here looks like a giant pointy sandcastle.”

They were indeed in front of the Hungarian State Opera House which was where they were supposed to be meeting their mole in the Hungarian intelligence agency. She had apparently stumbled upon something that affected weapons trading and genetic engineering science that was so big she couldn’t simply drop off a flash drive in a drop box somewhere about it. And so they were here to receive her report in person. The whole thing had screamed trap but they could handle themselves. She had been on more than a handful of missions with Clint.

He was the only person alive she truly trusted. There was a level of respect and intimacy between them that she had never experienced. She owed him her life. And he had never come to collect on the debt, had acted insulted when she mentioned it. They flirted, often and with delight, but their relationship was more serious than that. Clint was her friend. Her only friend. He didn’t want anything from her that she wasn’t willing to give and that was powerful. Together they were S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best covert-ops pair. Together they were nearly unstoppable.

She found a place to park her bike and watched as Clint took apart his bow in two quick fluid jerks. It was almost like magic the way he handled a bow. He even shot a gun like how he released an arrow. It would have been silly if he weren’t so deadly.

He looked up at her and grinned. Clint didn’t leave the bow with the bike though, instead stored it under his jacket along with his streamline stealth quiver. It wasn’t always the best weapon for close combat but if anyone could use a bow like a bowie knife it was Barton.

She didn’t blame him for bringing his comfort weapons, she had her twin barettas, they would most likely need all of them.

They stood out in front for a beat.

“So is this starting to feel like sector 47 in our final assault on the Death Star.”

She raised an eyebrow at that.

“Possibly but we haven’t spotted any enemies yet so I won’t let you say the line. Could be an Empty Fort Strategy anyway.”

Clint scratched the back his neck and looked at her with exasperation.

“I make a Star Wars reference and you respond with one from The Book of Qi? Did they read you Sun Tzu and Machiavelli before bed in Russia?”

Nat snorted.

“No they beat me with willow switches to see how long it took me to heal or pass out from the pain.”

Clint’s eyes went dark with rage and his mouth snapped shut. Nat just shrugged and smiled wickedly while pointing at the steps to the opera house.

“The opera ain’t over til the fat lady sings.”

Clint did crack a smile at that.

“You’re gonna have to actually talk about it sometime Nat. I’m always listening.”

Then he batted his eyes theatrically.

“But I’m glad we’ve still got a shot at getting out of this alive as I would hate to die a virgin.”

She punched him solidly in arm as they ascended the massive stone staircase to the main entrance. He simply snickered and followed her inside. She could have made a crack about that bucket list wish being filled long ago but was instead enamored with the interior of the opera house.

The building was supposed to be mostly empty as their contact had arranged. The vaulted ceilings were covered in beautiful murals of gilt mythical beasts and the Greek Gods on Olympus. A massive bronze and crystal chandelier illuminated the whole room full of marble columns and of course a grand staircase. Clint let out a low whistle beside her. Something moved at the top of the staircase and they both jerked their heads up to look at it.

Nat blinked. The room was suddenly alight with animated chatter and people.

Opera patrons milled around all speaking Hungarian and gesturing with their champagne flutes. She followed a strange shimmer in the air and looked down. Nat was wearing a tight-fitting mermaid style ball gown. It was a bright and bloody red.

She glanced at Clint for confirmation that was she was seeing was real but he was no longer there. Immediately on high alert she scanned the crowd for anyone like her who looked out of place. Or for the muted dark purple of Clint’s windbreaker and his spiky dirty blonde hair. Movement was happening all over now but once again the stairs drew her eyes.

At the top was a beautiful raven haired woman dressed in shimmering green. The crystals in her dress reflected off her green eyes as she looked straight into Natasha’s. Her smile was predatory.

That was the person responsible for Clint’s disappearance and whatever the hell was happening around her, to her. Nat began moving hurriedly through the crowd of people towards the woman with the long black hair. Nat watched in frustration as she turned and melted into the crowd around her it was like moving through water all of sudden. She wasn’t moving nearly fast enough to catch her.

Nat dashed up the stairs in slow motion and viciously kicked off her clunky red high heels half way up. When she got to the top where she had seen the woman she caught a glimpse of emerald flash along the right wing of the theater balcony. Lifting the hem of her skirt all the way up to her thighs she tried to sprint after her, elbowing her way through the opera patrons like falling into some sort of hazy dream. Her feet padded hollowly along the red plush carpeting of the theater.

The figure she had been chasing ducked into one of the curtained boxes closest to the stage and she flung the curtain back to follow her. There was no one else in the box but the two of them, other people had started filing back into the theater, intermission looked to be ending. The woman was watching people talk in the balcony across from them.

“Are you doing this? Who are you?”

The woman turned to her and removed her long shimmering shawl, placing it carefully on the plush gilt and red cushioned seat behind her. The dress was strapless and showed of the creamy expanse of the top of her breasts and long neck.

“I am casting this illusion yes. As for who I am agent Romanoff, well you’ll know that soon enough. Interestingly, your reason for being here now works for a mutual acquaintance of yours and mine, and she has changed her mind about helping you.”

With a beckoning, black-nailed, lithe hand she lured a form from the shadows in the curtains. It materialized next to her. The face of the mole she was here to meet was staring at her with glowing red eyes, her hand clasped tightly around Clint’s unconscious throat. Nat’s fingers dug into her dress and ripped holes through the fabric of it. Her eyes turned rust red.

“Put him down.”

The unnamed sorceress with cruel and slightly unhinged green eyes laughed.

“Oh poor choice of words.”

She made a bored dismissive gesture and the vampyr holding Clint lifted him by his throat with one hand and dropped him over the edge of the balcony.

The vampyr’s fingers releasing him slowed down as Nat darted after him into empty air. There was no time to think or plan.

Grabbing him she curled her smaller frame around his as they plummeted into the empty air and the theater seats below. They landed with a loud crunch on the wooden and metal seats. She felt the fall shatter her collarbone and dislocate her right arm. Clint would be okay though, maybe a bruise on the shin but that’s it.

She jerked herself from under Clint to her knees and with two quick pulls and one push popped her shoulder back into place.

The pain made the illusion flash and suddenly all of the opera goers vanished. So did her ruined red dress, she was back in her leather jacket and combat boots. Nat stood then slung Clint roughly over her good shoulder. She tried to make a run outside into the foyer.

The shadows started to flicker and nasty laughter, like dead leaves on wet ground, filled the domed ceiling and echoed back down towards her.

“Do you really think you can take us little sister?”

The vampyr that had once been her contact inside of Hungarian intelligence apparated in front of her. Nat licked the blood off of her split lip and spit it at the vampyr’s feet.

“I’m four times your age, who the hell are you calling little sister.”

The vampyr threw her head back and cackled as Nat reached into Clint’s stealth quiver, flicked the tip of one of the UV arrows on, and threw it directly into her face. It crackled to life with a ball of electric sunshine and she screamed as it disintegrated her body into ashes. Nat didn’t wait for the others to come out of the shadows as she carried Clint, half limping half running up the hallway towards the main exit.

Something lunged at her as soon as she flung the massive doors to the theater open.

Rolling to avoid the flying vampyr she shoved Clint behind her and locked sights with it. It froze in fascination.

It might have been a full vampyr but it was a relatively new one. She was over sixty years its senior and that did count for something in this battle of wills. Nat crushed it with her mind with a satisfying scream of agony. Thumping red flashed along the corners of her peripheral vision. It felt delicious stomping its desire to harm her to bits. She made it drop to the ground like a stone. But there was no time to watch it slowly shrivel and sink in on itself as three more vampyrs approached her, circling inwards towards her from the flickering shadows.

Instead of rust her eyes glowed the color of molten iron. Vampyrs came at her from all sides. She backed Clint’s unconscious body against the wall of the bar covered in wine selections. When he was secure Nat started to beat them back with a combo of her electric gauntlets and the force of her mind thrall over theirs. Ripping their consciousnesses and gossamer physical forms to shreds.

The blood fury hadn’t come over her like this since she worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. She hadn’t needed it yet but now Clint was down and they deserved every fist full of pain she could give them. They deserved to die in agony under her scorching gaze and weight of her blazing mind.

If they could have still bled she would have bathed in it happily. Nat was going to make sure Clint made it out of this alive and unturned. It was no problem at all now that she would have to kill all of the vampyrs to do it. That would be a joy.

One of the more powerful shades threw her through the air into the top shelf of the bar.

Glass and white wine spurted into the air around her. Picking herself up off the shard covered ground she grabbed Clint’s bow, snapped it into place and grabbed one of the electric arrows. Aiming for the dimly lit chandelier she hit the top of it, sending a shower of light and sparks over the two remaining vampyrs. They hissed and hid their eyes but then turned to face her mockingly. The big one that had thrown her into the bar laughed.

“Is that supposed to hurt us woman?”

Nat shrugged and lowered her bow.

“Not really. But that is.”

She pointed at the massive 6,724 pound copper chandelier as it cracked from its moorings and fell on top of them, crushing them both into a cloud of dusty nothing.

Nat ducked back down behind the bar ran her hands over Clint’s arms and throat, checking him for any bites. There were none visible, she shook him and slapped him hard in the face. Still he remained unconscious. This wasn’t good.

Whatever they had done to him had run deep. Whether it was a thrall or the magic of the sorceress he was still locked inside his own head. And from experience she knew exactly how unpleasant that could be. At least he was still breathing.Opening one of his eyes she let hers slide back to their red enthralling form.

“Sorry about this.”

Then as loud as she could she screamed into his mind.

“Wake up CLINTON FRANCIS BARTON.”

His whole body convulsed and his eyes snapped open.

“Jesus Christ Nat!”

He was still shaking as she embraced him, burying her head in the crook of neck and shoulder. All of the broken bones and exhaustion were catching up with her. She rarely embraced him like this but he was alive, and undamaged enough take somebody’s name in vain. So that was a good sign. It would probably behove of them to go back to her bike and get the fuck out of here. If a date ever asked to go to the opera, she was going to have to turn them down after this. Especially if they had piercing green eyes and a shit-eating grin. Not that she got many dates these days, but a girl could dream of heartlessly turning people down. Maybe they could go somewhere nice after this. An outdoor cafe bathed in sunlight. She wouldn’t make Clint wear a tie.

Her thoughts were starting to slide into the dangerously obscene as she looked down at his still confused face. The next few minutes would be timely for her to get some of her emergency serum from her bike. Before she did something regrettable involving Clint and blood.

“What the hell happened?”

He was blearily surveying the shattered glass and conspicuous piles of black ash scattered around their sprawled legs on the marble floor of the opera house. She wanted to touch him. Her skin was prickling and she could feel the blood pumping rapidly up and down his neck. Now was not the time to want to be close to someone, even if she really wanted to hug Clint. Nat shook her head and offered him a hand up.

“I’ll explain on the way to our debrief. Just as you can fill me in on what happened to you. I think now would be a good time to get the fuck out of here though.”

Clint groaned as he stood up, one hand in hers, the other still rubbing his head.

“I don’t remember anything after walking in here. There was a strange pulsing green glow and then nothing. Lights out. But the broken bottles, chandelier, and smoking piles of ash point to one really wild bender.”

His blue eyes were almost black as he looked into hers.

“And I’m gonna be hearing your voice echoing in my head for days. But as sexy as that sounds... it’s not ‘cause you sounded like my mother.”

Natasha laughed even though each chuckle sent bolts of pain through her shoulder. Clint continued as they both limped towards the outside doors.

“Don’t think I’m not going to hold you to dinner though. But for all my pain and suffering the least you could do is not make me wear a tie.”

She would have to write a report on this but for now she just wanted to go home. How novel to have a home to go back to. She smiled down at an exhausted Clint as they exited the opera down the outdoor staircase.

“Alright but I get to pick the restaurant. No pizza. Not again.”

Clint looked like he was about to protest but she just glared at him despairingly and he shut up. It was a good thing he couldn’t see her goofy grin while riding behind her on the bike. Together they made their way to the bike and out of Budapest. The motorcycle ride had been excruciating as she bumped along over the cobbled back streets but at least Clint had distracted her by complaining about her driving the whole way.

They had explained the whole mess to Fury upon extraction. Nat fighting off vampyrs and the illusion inducing woman, the compromised inside contact who was now dead and useless, whatever she had wanted to tell them was compromised intel. And all about Clint being the heavily unconscious damsel in distress. After that Maria and Agent May had joked that what happened in Budapest stayed in Budapest because only people with level four or higher clearance even knew that Supernaturals existed. And for the moment that was the end of their infamous wild night in Budapest.

It wasn’t until years later, when her private conversation with a Norse god happened, that she realized how deep and truly fucked they were.

Loki was playing the long game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update yay. I am enjoying researching and writing for this so I would love some feedback. Steve's chapter is next and there will be warnings on that one. As for the Russian in this chapter the first line Nat says to Clint is
> 
> "That's not the only thing inside you that needs taming."  
> followed by  
> "Oh really?"
> 
> Hope you liked the little bit of Clintasha in this chapter. They are friends who date on and off but keep in mind Nat has only been working with Clint and S.H.I.E.L.D. for three years at this point as she was recruited in 1998.


	6. All the Very Best of us String Ourselves up for Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve, Bucky and Sam try to adjust to living in the Avengers tower together.
> 
> Nat finally comes home.
> 
> Chapter WARNINGS: self harm, and mentions of emotional abuse.

 

**_Avengers Tower, Manhattan, New York City, New York, November 2014_ **

****

“See whole floor to yourself. There’s a gym, a kitchen, even a studio with a nice view and some paints. I thought of everything. You should be impressed.”

Steve sighed as Tony Stark slapped him on the arm.

“What about Bucky? Is there a room for her?”

Tony rolled his eyes and then gestured down the brightly lit white hallway to his left.

“You have four guest bedrooms fully furnished, I mean you can order whatever furniture you want but they come with some, just let Jarvis know. You can put whoever you want in them although, as promised, Bucky and Sam each have their own floor as well. I’m a man of my word. Most of the time.”

He took another bit of the granola bar he was eating and Pepper eyed him suspiciously.

“If you need any help getting settled in just let us know. Also like Tony was saying feel free to ask Jarvis for anything you may need; groceries, cookware, furniture, electronics. The basics are covered of course but we can get you practically anything you need.”

‘Anything’ Tony mouthed saucily over Pepper’s shoulder. She didn’t have to look back at him to elbow him in the gut. He winced and finished his granola bar.

Steve still wasn’t entirely comfortable with this. Really it had been Sam who had talked him into it. Bucky, since she returned with them to Sam’s apartment in DC had been nearly catatonic on bad days and on good days they managed to get four sentences out of her.

They were constantly asking her what she wanted to do, eat, read, it was all about consent. There had been so little in her life in the last 75 years they asked her opinions on things that didn’t even need it. It was so important that she knew she could set boundaries and that people would respect them.

At first they had only gotten a nod yes or no from her but eventually she began to express preferences for certain foods and shoes and oddly enough movies and tv shows. It was slow going though and every once and awhile she would wake up screaming and thrashing or Steve would catch her in Sam’s backyard breaking rocks into bits with her metal arm.

At least it wasn’t anyone’s heads.

It was like any progress they made with her was two steps forward and three steps back. She hadn’t tried to hurt either him or Sam. At least not on purpose. They had both gotten smacked once of twice by her flailing arms or legs in the middle of one of her flashbacks. Which, although it had hurt, it wasn’t an attack. That had been Sam’s first concern and Steve didn’t blame him for having it, but he knew Bucky. Even if she wasn’t her old self she still wouldn’t hurt either of them now that she knew them. Knew him.

He was trying not to push her too hard. There was so much missing in her mind and to be fair he hadn’t known her for 75 years of both of their lives now. He wished Natasha was here.

No one knew where she was, not even Clint who had returned from Brazil to find S.H.I.E.L.D. burned to the ground. He lived on one of the highest floors in the tower and spent a lot of time shooting arrows at all of the surrounding buildings satellite dishes until Tony got so many complaint calls that he finally caved and built him an archery range.

No one had heard from her in almost six months and Steve was finally starting to worry about her. Theoretically he knew she could take care of herself. That she was probably just on a mission of her own design in some foreign country. But everything was still very fragile here.

Even if Hill, Ms. Potts, and Stark seemed to be running things smoothly he still rubbed him the wrong way. He was too much like Howard and yet not like him at all. It was unnerving for him. Tony was reckless and egotistical and flirtatious in all the ways that the other Stark he had known was and yet he wasn’t Howard. Howard had been his friend and Tony was... well he wasn’t. But then again Bucky was much the same way. The Bucky that he and Sam had been trying to take care of for the last two months wasn’t the Bucky he had grown up with and yet he still loved her. Steve loved her so much it made him wonder if he was hurting her by not letting her breath.

For the first time in decades she was free to make her own choices, be a person and not a weapon. And here he was trying to make her remember who she was to him all those years ago. Instead of doing what he should have, letting her decide if she even wanted to be the Bucky he had grown up with, fought with, fallen in love with. He had been talking about this extensively with Sam. At first it had been kind of rocky but Sam had been patient with him and he had listened. He was so lucky to have him.

Sam had been a wonderful bridge between all of them. He had been with Bucky just as much as Steve and hadn’t complained about it for a minute. He almost wished he had. They were making it work but Steve wasn’t sure what to do about their sex life, which had all but died with Bucky crawling in between them to sleep every other night. She would latch onto Steve or Sam and fall asleep shaking. Both of them would just pull her to their bodies protectively and fall asleep. No one really talked about if it was strange for her to be there because it worked for them, all of them slept that way.

Maybe more space was the answer but he had a feeling they would all end curled up together again.

It reminded Steve of when Bucky would come home exhausted from working at the construction site and insist on sleeping on the floor so he could have the bed. And he would wait till she was asleep to try and drag her up into the bed to sleep, it usually took him a couple tries but eventually he would get her up there and she would wake up and sigh and then hold him.

They would just lay there, with neither one of them saying anything, and fall asleep. And she would go to work and the next night they would do it all over again. Bucky was trying to protect him for everything, from hunger, the cold, and diseases but also from her. She had never said it but every time Steve had tried to broach the subject she had made it clear that she thought she wasn’t good enough for him.

She believed she was good as friend but never as a lover or wife. Steve strongly disagreed. He would have dropped to his knee in a heartbeat for her. He wasn’t frail anymore. Though she now was, she didn’t need protecting. If anything she needed a friend. His Stark phone started to vibrate in his leather jacket pocket. It was Sam; he picked it up smiling faintly.

“Hey we’re almost there. Everything all right? Stark didn’t give you any trouble?”

“Nope. No more than usual anyway. I haven’t looked around but apparently the floor right above and below mine are for you and Buck respectively. How is she doing?”

Steve hadn’t been away from either of them for more than a couple hours the whole time since she came home with them and he was worried.

“She’s good. We made omelettes today for breakfast, hers was actually better than mine.”

Steve heard her mumble something from the background.

“Buck says that’s because I didn’t put any bacon in mine.”

Steve grinned goofily and when he remembered Sam couldn’t see him he spoke up.

“Well I’ll make sure Jarvis has lots of bacon in both our fridges for when you guys get here.”

This time he could hear Bucky when she said “dynamite” in a low voice. Sam laughed and then told Steve he loved him and he would be there soon. Steve hung up after saying the same and went into the kitchen to check the refrigerator for bacon. There wasn’t any so he asked Jarvis aloud if he could have some brought in.

“Of course Captain Rogers. Are there any other groceries I should have brought in?”

Steve had found that, although most of the food now tasted completely different from what he was used to having before being frozen, he couldn’t really turn down any of it. Neither could Bucky. They had both be raised in a time where you ate what you had.

They lived in the city so he and Bucky regularly hit the Penny Restaurants and Soup Kitchens together. Steve was the better cook out of the two of them but their one room flat didn’t have anything in it but a stove with two burners, no ice box. There was a jar of Crisco on the windowsill to cook with. Every morning he would pack her metal lunch box with a salted meat or scrambled egg sandwich, an orange, and a mug of instant coffee.

Then he would go off to the drawing academy down the street and sketch the models there all day before going home and cooking them dinner. She would come home and use the communal shower on their floor and th set the table for the two of them. The first thing she did was always praise the food. It didn’t matter what it was, even if it was boiled halibut, which wasn’t her favorite. Steve would blush and mumble about it not being as nice or sweet as Bucky was. She would laugh and then they would dig in. It was their version of Grace. It was a Grace he believed in.

To impress her, Steve even took up reading Good Housekeeping and Ladies Home Journal looking for recipes to make what they could afford to buy taste the best it possibly could. Buck would make jokes about him being her good little homemaker after that but he didn’t mind. She stopped joking about it because he took it as a compliment. Instead she just unabashedly complimented his cooking.

Once she came home to live with he and Sam he had insisted on cooking for her. Everything that he could remember making for her and some things he hadn’t ever had the chance to make. Steve even went on the internet to find those same old recipes from American Cookery.

The first night he cooked for them he went all out so that even Sam whistled in appreciation at the shoulder of stuffed lamb, buttered beets, brown potatoes, and bread pudding for dessert.

As soon as Steve sat down at the table he started to serve them passing the plate around and when it got to Bucky she looked up at him through her straggly hair and said.

“This food looks beautiful.”

Her eyes got huge and Steve simply stared back at her as they both said in unison.

“Not as beautiful as you, baby doll.”

Steve tried really hard not to cry but his eyes teared up anyway. Bucky looked like she was about ready to run out of the house. Sam defused the situation by starting to eat and making loud appreciative noises as he shoveled food in his mouth. After that dinner went smoothly and everyone finished their plates full of seconds and thirds. They were all completely stuffed when they collapsed together on the couch.

Bucky pulled her legs up to her chest and let both of them loop their arms around her shoulders. She laid her head down on Steve’s shoulder and they stayed like that.

“I remembered you making halibut when you were mad at me.”

Steve burst out laughing so hard that he had to work not to throw up. Bucky looked nonplussed when he turned to her. He stuffed down his laughter and let a grin take its place instead.

“I did not. I just brought home whatever they had on discount at the market that day.”

Bucky hadn’t smiled. Not really. Not since he had seen her alive and well after all these years. The last time he had seen her smile had been in bed that night before the mission he thought she had died on. But there it was. A tiny little limp of a grin.

“I might not remember a whole lot, Steve Rogers, but I do remember you loving to bust my chops.”

She leaned up and kissed him chastly on the cheek and then shrunk back away from him towards Sam. Steve watched her put her head on his shoulder. With his heart in his throat he was blushing pink from his chest all the way up to his hairline. It was too much like old times.

When Steve didn’t answer the question Jarvis had posed about the groceries he simply responded that he would place the order for only bacon this time and alert Steve to when Sam and Bucky arrived.

He was wrung out all of a sudden. Like he needed to lay down for a long time. Steve sunk down into the navy leather couch in the living room and started to narrow his eyes at the furnishings. All of the chairs, dining room table, stools at the bar in the kitchen, couch, and recliners were muted shades of red, white, and blue.

He was going to kill Tony Stark.

Stark must have been waiting for them with Pepper as well, because even though Jarvis told him Sam and Bucky had arrived, it took them awhile to get to his floor. When the elevator did ding, he got up to embrace Sam and gave him a warm kiss that didn’t last nearly as long as he wanted it to and then he turned to Bucky.

They stared at each other awkwardly before she rolled her eyes and hugged him. He greedily held her and to his surprise when she pulled away she kissed him lightly on the cheek before darting back towards the elevator to grab her rucksack.

He gestured at the living room and kitchen and started to give them a tour. On the way to the bedrooms Sam spoke up.

“So did you pick the color scheme or?”

Steve punched him lightly in the arm and Sam started laughing. Bucky had wandered off ahead of them. They found an open door, the one at the very end of the hallway and she was standing in front of the large glass window looking out at downtown NYC. Steve was sure to make a shuffling noise as he walked up behind her.

Sneaking up on her was a bad idea as she seemed to always be on high alert. Sam was pretty sure she had the worst cause of PTSD he’d ever come across. It was a miracle she was functioning at all at this point. Sam had suggested several times getting her some professional help but Steve didn’t think that would turn out so well.

Bucky tended to be consumed with hatred around people in white coats now that she remembered more. She could easily rip off a man’s head with her metal arm or shift into a werewolf at any time. Drugs and restraints were completely out of the question; her mind had been altered too many times without her consent already.

They just took it one day at a time. At least she didn’t seem to be any worse than when she had found them. Her metal hand was splayed against the glass as she scanned the surrounding buildings.

“I like it. It’s two way. We can see out but no one can see in. Also this building is the tallest of all of them and offers the best vantage point for defense and offense.”

Steve placed a careful hand on her shoulder and she leaned into it a bit.

“That’s great Buck, but what do you think of the insides? Is this bed okay? Do you need anything else in here besides a dresser and bedside table?”

She scrunched up her brow in concentration.

“I don’t know. I don’t think this bed will fit all three of us very comfortably.”

Steve’s heart clenched and he laughed softly. They had needed to get a bigger bed at Sam’s place but that had been alright. He should have checked immediately that his room had a big enough bed.

“Well this is your room, just for you. I’ll make sure my bedroom has a big enough bed for all of us though okay?”

She nodded, her head strangely floppy. Steve left her alone after that. He immediately went to the master bedroom and with relief saw and extra large king bed with Sam already splayed out in the middle of it.

“See Tony isn’t so bad. Also I personally think the star spangled toilet seat is hilarious.”

“What!?”

Sam started laughing at his face and then sighed.

“I’m just messing with you. Come here. Do you think we’ll have a little time to ourselves?”

Steve walked in and shut the door.

“Yeah. I think so.”

There was a mischievous grin splitting his face.

Sam laughed louder as Steve made a run for the bed and pounced on him. Being wrapped up together... felt right. Kissing him felt like home. Steve was happy. Despite all of the emptiness of the past two years, he was starting live again.

They made love faster than they would have liked but Steve wanted to go check on Bucky afterwards. Sam put on his sweats and shooed Steve down the hall while he walked towards the kitchen. Steve knocked before entering but Bucky wasn’t there.

Slightly worried, he started to leave to look in the other rooms. Maybe she was in the living room watching something on tv. Then he heard the faint hiss of the shower in the bathroom. Relaxing he went to the door to the bathroom and knocked loud enough for her to hear him.

“Hey, Sam is making steak and eggs for dinner and flap jacks if you want ‘em. Come out to the kitchen when you’re done okay?”

He waited for a response but when he didn’t get any he started to worry.

“Bucky?”

He didn’t want to violate her privacy but he was also concerned something might have happened to her. The worst possible scenario—that she had done something to hurt herself—went flashing across his vision. He opened the door and a cloud of steam rushed out to meet him. The fans appeared to be on sucking steam away but the shower was making it faster than the fans could get rid of it.

“Buck?”

His voice was soft and as soothing as he could make it. It didn’t tremble.

Steve moved in closer to the huge glass shower. There was a shape curled up on the smooth white tiled floor as it was assaulted with scalding water on all sides. He jerked forward and reached out to try and turn off the jets but pulled his hand back as he was burned. He shouted angrily at the ceiling.

“Jarvis turn off the water NOW!”

All of the jets turned off immediately and he moved to touch Bucky again but stopped himself just in time. She was shaking as her tender pink skin bubbled and rehealed itself. He turned and grabbed one of extra soft fluffy towels from the rack and kneeled down on the wet floor of the shower with her.

It seemed like he had to wait forever but when it looked like her skin was fully healed to a normal shade he reached down and wrapped her in the towel. She convulsed and jerked up from the slippery floor. Steam swirled around her and Steve started to sweat as he pulled her up off the shower’s floor towards his chest.

“It’s okay Bucky everything is going to be okay.”

He couldn’t stop the flow of words coming out of his mouth but she didn’t seem to hear them. She was nearly catatonic. His heart stopped as he held her tighter and whispered her name over and over. Her voice was weak, like a withered blade of grass whistling in his ear.

“I’m cold. Always filthy and cold. So cold. They didn’t care how much it hurt. It never mattered. I never mattered.”

 

Steve let out a sob and held her closer. Then she was pushing back from him and looking up into his red face. Bucky reached up and wiped some of his tears away with her metallic fingers that were still hot from the boiling water.

“Why are you crying Steve? Where does it hurt?”

He shook as he tried to hold back more tears. Why did this have to happen to her? Why couldn’t it have been him somehow? He would have given anything, literally anything, for her to have never had to be the Winter Soldier.

Bucky leaned in and kissed him.

He froze in shock as she pressed up against him. The towel slipped from her shoulders and she started to move her hands down his chest towards his crotch. That snapped him out of it and he firmly took her by the shoulders and pulled her off of him.

Her wide childlike eyes were hurt and confused.

“I want to comfort you. Isn’t that right? Don’t you want to have sex with me?”

His heart broke in two. It was all so wrong, like a twisted version of how things should be. His face became grim.

“I’m not...you’re not. Bucky, I don’t think you’re ready yet. Sex should be a happy thing, a loving thing, and I love you but you need some more time to think about it. I don’t think now is the right time. We’ll wait until you’re ready okay?”

She looked down at her naked body and then back at his determined face and said.

“Okay. I trust you Steve.”

He let out the breath that he hadn’t realized he had been holding.

Steve wrapped her in the towel before practically picking her up and setting her on her feet then leading her back into the bedroom. She let him help her get dressed in her pajamas and then they walked out into the hall. Sam was waiting just outside the door for them, a concerned look on his face.

Steve shook his head “no” once and then gently handed off Bucky to Sam.

“Why don’t you guys get some dinner I’ll be out in a moment.”

Sam wrapped a soothing arm around Bucky’s shoulders and led her down the hallway towards the kitchen.

“I hope you like steak as well as bacon but just in case I made some bacon too.”

Steve watched her nod mutely before going back into the room and shutting the door.

“Jarvis is this room soundproof?”

He didn’t want Bucky to hear him yelling. The last thing they needed was her thinking he was mad at her, that he blamed her for what just happened. Because he didn’t, not in the least bit. There was plenty of blame to go around. Most of it rested on HYDRA, some of it rested on him.

“It is now Captain. Shall I soundproof all of your quarters?”

“No. And you can turn it off for this room after I leave. WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING!? Why didn’t you turn the water off as soon as it was hot enough to hurt her?!”

Jarvis paused for a second and then replied when it looked like Steve wouldn’t yell at him again.

“For privacy purposes I have been instructed not to monitor what any of you do while you are in your bedrooms or the bathroom. Although my sensors did detect an unusual heat spike in the water I assumed that with Ms. Barnes physiology she could handle it and that it might even be her preferred shower temperature.”

Steve took several deep breaths through his nose. It wasn’t Jarvis’ fault. He was doing as he was programmed to. To respect the privacy and boundaries of the humans who lived in his building. This was Steve’s fault for not warning Jarvis about Bucky not being the most emotionally and mentally stable human being right now. Er werewolf.

“Alright. In the future though can you please keep an eye on Bucky, at all times, and if it looks like she’s hurting herself let me or Sam know immediately and stop her. Also don’t tell Tony about this.”

Jarvis sounded like he was clearing his throat but he didn’t have one.

“I may have already notified Mr. Stark of the incident as it is protocol for me to report whenever anyone is physically injured in the tower. But I can refrain from doing so in the future.”

Steve sighed heavily. And yet Tony wasn’t banging down his door trying to actually find out what was going on. It was a start.

“It is his tower I guess but can you tell him we’ve got it under control and that it’s none of his damn business?”

“Of course Sir. Will there be anything else you need at this moment?”

“Yeah. Can you turn off all the cameras in here until I leave? I want to be alone.”

“Yes and done as you requested.”

After that it was silent. Steve crawled into Bucky’s bed and buried his face in her pillow. Her scent wasn’t nearly as comforting as it should have been. He cried, for a long time.

When he woke up bleary eyed Bucky was wedged in under his ribs, her legs tangled with his. And Sam was spooning his back, one arm draped protectively over his shoulders.

They were a family; no matter what they would make it through this together. He had his family again. And yet it wasn’t quite complete. Nat was still missing. It was dark out so Steve closed his eyes and let sleep take him once more. Tomorrow would be better, tomorrow they would all sleep in a bigger bed.

After eating a quiet breakfast and puttering around the house ineffectually Steve took the elevator to the top floor just below the roof, Tony’s penthouse. Jarvis announced his arrival as the doors opened and Pepper, who was working at her glass desk overlooking the landing strip for the Iron Man suits, waved cheerfully at him. Tony was nowhere in sight.

“Hey sorry to bother you but do you know where Stark is I need to talk to him.”

Pepper finished typing something on her computer and then stood up.

“He’s down in his lab with Bruce right now. Is it something urgent? I can ping him if you need me to.”

Steve felt awkward then. It wasn’t urgent he just wanted to argue with him, like always.

“Uh no. Well I guess it can keep. Thanks for your time Ms. Potts sorry for bothering you.”

Pepper waved a dismissive hand at him.

“No bother at all and why don’t you stay. I just ordered Vietnamese food from my favorite place in Chinatown. We can have a nice chat and get to know each other better.”

Steve didn’t know Pepper all that well. If he had he would have been slightly terrified right now.

“Well if you’re sure it’s alright.”

Pepper smiled warmly and gestured at the half circle couch in front of the large flat screen.

“Have a seat. Would you like something to drink? I have pretty much everything alcoholic thanks to Tony and some juice and soda if you’re interested.”

“Water would be fine thank you.”

Pepper nodded and busied herself in the kitchen pouring them some bottled water and bringing it over to sit next to Steve on the cushy leather couch. He took it politely and drank a little before setting it down on the class coffee table. She did the same before setting hers down next to his on a laminated paper coaster with the letters AC/DC on it. He wondered briefly what alternating and direct current had to do with anything before he remembered it was the name of a band.

Pepper turned to face him smiling brightly and that did make him nervous. And rightly so. Virginia “Pepper” Potts was a force to be reckoned with when she was on a mission.

And right now Steve was her mission.

“Now before you say anything I’m going to let you know that I like you Captain Rogers, or Steve, may I call you Steve?”

“Er yes.”

She smiled indulgently and then continued.

“Good. Well then Steve there’s some things you should know about Tony before you both decide to have it out and finally beat the shit out of each other.”

He was pleasantly surprised with her getting right to the point. He nodded slowly for her to continue.

“The first thing is that Tony hates himself more than you ever could. More than all of his market rivals, more than the villains he’s put in jail or in the ground, more than the U.S. government, and more than the former weapons dealers who used to make a killing off of his mind. He hides it well under bravado and humor but he genuinely believes he is unlovable.”

Steve hadn’t been expecting that. She must have read the incredulity in his expression because she held up her hands.

“Now I’m not saying he isn’t a narcissistic, sarcastic, high functioning alcoholic, with a penchant for flirting with anything that’s sentient. But he’s also a brilliant inventor who genuinely cares what happens to the world because of what he creates. And he’s willing to nearly kill himself and suffer through PTSD in order to make sure people are safe.”

Steve was quiet so she continued.

“Tony’s messed up for a lot of reasons but one of the biggest ones is that his father could never get over you. He spent most of Tony’s childhood looking for you in the ocean, trying to build something to bring you back. Howard idolized you and so did Tony.”

“Unfortunately, no matter how many robots he built out of transistor radios and car batteries nothing could ever compare to the miracle of Howard’s Vita Ray and you. Are you starting to see where I’m going with this?”

“Why didn’t he tell me any of this? I would have—”

Pepper arched a perfectly manicured eyebrow at him.

“We’re talking about Tony here. Most of this stuff is information I have gleaned from his drunken stupors and working for him for the last ten years. Talking about feelings is not something he’s good at. Especially not to Captain America.”

Steve felt conflicted. Because on the one hand he still felt uncomfortable around Tony, after the Chitauri invasion he had gained more respect for him though. On the other hand he now understood why they had immediately been at each other’s throats. And he was suddenly questioning why he was more concerned with remembering Howard fondly than getting along with Tony. Maybe this was a good place to start.

Now that Steve knew why Tony had reacted so violently to being compared to Howard he could understand how to talk with him a bit better. Maybe even banter back at him. Tony seemed to not realize that he had a sense of humor, albeit a sarcastic and dry one.They probably wouldn’t be best friends right away but at least they wouldn’t be “beating the shit out of each other” as Pepper had said.

“Okay. I think I finally get it. A little bit. Thank you Ms. Potts. He’s lucky to have you, you know.”

She grinned and stood up to go get the Vietnamese food from the delivery girl who had gotten off the elevator.

“You’re damn right he is. If my net worth and current housing arrangement is anything to judge by he knows it too. And please call me Pepper.”

They ate beef and seafood pho and spring rolls with peanut sauce in relative quiet after that. When they finished Pepper had to excuse herself to go to a board meeting but invited Steve to stay until Tony came back up. Which she warned him might be never.

He declined and instead went back to his floor. Bucky was reading something on her Stark pad on the couch while Sam played the new Tomb Raider game that hadn’t come out yet on the big screen.

They both looked up and Sam smiled at him as he came in. Steve waved at them and then headed down the opposite hallway towards the gym. There was a door right before the gym that he hadn’t opened before and when he did he froze. Inside was a brightly lit studio.

There were easels and large sketch pads full of news print, new oil paints and a set of charcoal and goat hair brushes. There was also a stretched canvas and a roll of more canvas with stretcher bars and a staple gun in case he wanted to stretch his own.

He ran his hands over one of the polished wood easels and sighed. Maybe he had misjudged Tony afterall. Instead of going to the gym to literally knock the stuffing out of several punching bags he sat down and started to draw Bucky from memory.

How she looked now mixed with the smile she used to wear back when they lived together in Brooklyn. It was oddly therapeutic. When he finished one sketch he moved onto the next, drawing all the people he had known and loved as he remembered them. The picture of his mother was smudged and soft because he could only remember her silhouette and not her actual features. Sam’s was full of life, his gap tooth smile made Steve grin as he drew him. Nat’s was solemn not meeting his eye as she was in profile looking ahead, always keeping her gaze on her future and never her past.

And Peggy.

He drew her as he remembered her in the war, red lipstick and fiercely self sufficient, gazing straight into the viewers eyes with a smirk. He lost track of time but Jarvis turned the lights up in brightness once the natural sunlight no longer filtered in. He would have kept going if Sam hadn’t walked in and stared at all the charcoal drawings silently.

“You’re really good you know that?”

Steve absently wiped his smudged dust covered hands on his jeans and looked down at the sketches laid out before him on the floor. Doctor Erskine, Peggy, Bucky, Colonel Phillips, all the Howlies laughing with linked arms, his mother, Sam, Natasha, and a self portrait. Steve how he had looked before the serum, small but resolute, ready to take on anything.

Sam wordlessly helped him pin all of them to the walls before Steve washed up and sat down to dinner with his family.

Things were going to be okay. Steve would make sure of it.

 

**_??????, Earthly Space Lakeview, Chicago, Illinois, November 2014_ **

 

Natasha lunged forward. The cat slipped through her hands like smoke once again and she let out a snarl as he bounded away into the shifting stars surrounding them. The cosmos danced silently around their little bubble of alternate reality, a nebula of twisty rose colored stars loomed large in the background.

There was no cold, no wind, no life other than the four of them in deep space. If it even was space. Nat wasn’t sure where they were as they had been too many places for her to name. Some of them near and familiar and others with red skies filled with thin green clouds and seas of coldly bubbling magenta.

Clea opened one of her eyes from where she sat, cross legged, floating over the mystical circle of sigils that propelled them through space.

“You’ll never catch him like that.”

She stood and huffed out a frustrated breath.

“I’m beginning to think I’ll never catch him at all.”

Topaz winked into existence behind Clea and began to play with her hair. Clea closed her eyes and smiled blissfully as her lover braided her hair.

“There’s the right train of thought. He’s a cat. What’s his nature like?”

Topaz made a swirling motion with both her hands. Her waist long braid swinging in time with the action.

“Wax on wax off padawan.”

Nat snorted.

“You’re mixing your references there Obi Miyagi. As for what’s in his nature, he’s a cat. His nature is to do whatever the fuck he pleases when he pleases.”

Clea pointed a finger at her like an arrow.

“Bingo! That’s what we’ve been trying to show you.”

Nat looked down dumbly as Panna bumped his head affectionately against her legs and purred. She sighed and looked back up to see Topaz and Clea both snickering at her.

“You wanted me to learn that I can’t alter somethings basic nature without hurting myself or them. And that if I want to succeed I should work with the nature of the beast instead of against it as it were.”

Topaz nodded sagely then burst out laughing as Clea beamed at her.

“Exactly so. Your training is almost complete. You have gone much farther than any other of your kind has been recorded going into the depths of repairing the mind. That is one of the most important lessons. Watch and guide. Do not push and mold.”

Panna’s green eyes pleaded with her as he pawed at her leg until she bent down to pick him up. He clawed his way from her arms to wrap himself around her shoulders and purr loudly.

“How long has it been?”

Topaz shrugged.

“Time is not a linear progression as you view it but in this space we have been training close to fifteen years. Outside it has been about four months.”

She thought hard about that. It was time to go back to New York City then. That’s where they were all waiting for her. That’s where her real work would begin.

“Okay. I’m ready.”

Clea unfolded her legs and stood on the flat disc of dimly glowing fuschia sigils. Topaz followed her lead and linked hands with her. Nat was the last to join the chain and complete the link between all three of them. As soon as the circle was completed they were in the back garden behind Clea and Topaz’s walk up. At least it looked like they were.

The sunlight was soft and gauzy, Clea was leaning down clipping white roses into a basket. They were all dressed in pastels.

Topaz in a beautiful powder blue sari that billowed with a life of its own, Clea in a soft lavender blouse and slacks, and Natasha in a gentle white sun dress with a scalloped hem. That was how she knew they still weren’t back in reality. She never wore white.

Topaz sat down on the wicker furniture that appeared with a wave of her hand. She gestured for Nat to sit across from her on a floral print cushion that covered the wicker chair. As she did the skirt of her dress flared out, she felt like a coffee filter. Nat said that aloud because she forgot that they were in her head and that every thought was outloud. They had learned about her sense of humor relatively quickly.

“Alright just think of this as a debriefing. Maybe it will go easier then.”

Clea came over to sit next to Topaz and drape one arm over her shoulder and her other hand on her lap. Natasha sighed in defeat and activated her eyes. They turned the same yellow as a crackling flame, almost white.

Images of all three of their lives flashed before her Sight. Snippets of Topaz’s suffering under the control of a sorcerer of the blackest arts, a snarled scream from a book that held secrets to raising immortally evil Gods.

Clea fighting for her right to exist in a different dimension, some place so alien that it hurt Nat’s eyes to look upon it for too long. The whole of reality was made of magic there. Lines of the stuff cut through every structure and person. They were practically Gods. Or demons.

Her own past full of blood, brains, the Black Widows who didn’t make it, Amora. The cruelty of sixty more years of the Red Rooms. A hunger that was human and the thirst for blood that wasn’t. Light and then bursts of heat against her face. A metallic reticulated arm shielding her from gunfire, cradling her to a hair covered chest. An inhuman and desperate howl that shook her lungs.

A child, a little girl dressed all in white. The white smock that with every beating, battle, and feeding turned the red of War.

Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave.

Bucky curled around her on that narrow twin bed in Russia.

Clint in bed naked behind her brushing her hair with his hands while she disassembled and cleaned her pistols.

Steve holding her after she unburdened herself to him.

Nick handing her a new identity, a new life and telling her she was welcome at S.H.I.E.L.D. That he didn’t know if he could trust her but wanted her there any way.

Clea and Topaz holding her while she came apart on their living room floor. Out of her mind with pain and rage, their soft hands stroking her back and shoulders while she writhed and shook with a particularly powerful fevered memory.

A dream.

Bucky, Sam, Steve, Clint, Tony, Bruce, Pepper, and her all wedged together on a couch watching the HBO miniseries based off of Captain America’s time at war. Which had an excellent production value but dubious historical accuracy.

Tony getting into a popcorn throwing fight with Clint, Bucky stuffed between Nat and Steve, her head on Nat’s shoulder and her hand in Steve’s lap. Sam rubbing Steve’s shoulders and eating the popcorn that was falling all over him from the popcorn war. It looked right even though it had never happened.

It looked like they were a family.

She gasped and opened her eyes.

Clea and Topaz stumbled from their sitting positions to lay flat on their backs on the hardwood living room floor. They were all panting and Clea started to giggle uncontrollably, Topaz joined her. Nat sat up even though her head was spinning. Topaz looked at her gleefully.

“Oh that was marvelous. You did fantastically! That last bit was even some precognition and oh was it spot on for the weaving of your final connections. Now you can call on us whenever if you need help in metaphysical or psychic endeavors.”

Clea sat up and patted Topaz lightly on her forehead.

“What she means darling is that you passed with flying colors. Is there something you want to do to celebrate? I know a restaurant in 1950s era Paris that has the best quiche you will ever taste.”

“Or we can totally get drunk here in Boystown! Berlin is pretty shitty but Scarlet is a good time. It’s up to you.”

Topaz started to sit up as well but Nat waved away their offers as she stood grimly.

“I don’t have time to celebrate right now. Maybe another time. The sooner I can get back to Manhattan the better.”

Clea rose to join her and gestured towards the door to the back porch.

“Things are always business with you. Whether it be personal business or spy business you rarely have any time for fun it seems.”

Nat shrugged and gave her a pinched smile.

“I have plenty of fun. Hacking Tony Stark’s personnel files is fun, assassinating Gregor Ballant was fun, watching Mad Men on my phone before Clint and I are dropped into Latveria is fun. I have fun it’s just not normal people fun.”

Topaz followed them both out into the garden and put her hands on her hips before extending one for Nat to shake. When she took it Topaz pulled her in close and whispered in her ear.

“You should have sexy fun as well. Let me know anytime if you want those werewolf romance tips.”

She winked and then let her go. Clea extended her hand to her.

“Fastest way to Stark Tower, faster than a Quinjet or the Iron Man armor even.”

Warily Nat took her hand and it was like she blinked except her eyelids hadn’t moved. One instant they were in Clea’s garden and the next they were on the roof of Avenger’s Tower. About three feet away tinkering on the landing strip’s gripping mechanism for the Iron Man suit was Tony Stark. He jumped and dropped the plasma torch he was holding.

“Jesus H. Christ I hate magic.”

Clea lowered the sunglasses she was now wearing and glared down at him.

“Nice to see you too Tony.”

He stood up shakily and wiped his grubby hands on his slacks before smirking at both of them.

“What brings you to my humble abode without your dashing husband? And with Agent Romanoff no less.”

Clea rolled her eyes and pushed her shades back up her nose before sneering at him.

“Haven’t you heard? Stephen and I are separated. Have been for two years now. As for Natasha she’s been staying with me on a little...vacation.”

Tony looked curiously at both of them then smiled smugly at Clea.

“ I guess that means you’re both estran-”

She held up a palm of burning white flame and said ominously.

“ _Don’t finish that sentence._ ”

The wind on top of the tower died down suspiciously quickly and for once in his life Tony Stark shut his mouth. Satisfied for the time being she turned to Nat and kissed her briefly on the cheek. Then snapped her fingers and summoned the black dufflebag full of all of the clothes Nat had been wearing for the last couple of months.

“You’re welcome to come see us any time. We’ll all miss you, even Panna.”

Nat smiled warmly at her and then gave her a quick embrace, whispering in her ear.

“Thank you, for everything.”

Clea nodded once then took a step back, wiggled her fingers mockingly at Tony and vanished. Nat was actually sad to see her go. She and Topaz had done her an immense favor.

Nat wouldn’t call it a kindness, as she had been forced to remember all those forgotten years. All of the acts she had been programmed to perform and that she had forced upon others. It was dehumanizing and devastating and they had walked her through it like a child taking her first steps. Warm with encouragement, soothing when it was needed, and firm with instruction when it wasn’t. They now knew everything.

That was a huge amount of trust. It made it even more worthwhile that it was reciprocal.

She had seen their pasts, as troubled as hers, just not in the same way. Topaz had been coerced by sorcery and Natasha by blood, brainwashing, and drugs. Clea had been coerced with love. Starved for it and rewarded with it when she submitted.

Eventually she had become her own woman, like Natasha, and although that would always be a part of her she didn’t let it rule her any more. She hoped that Bucky could move through the Hellscape she was in and see the other side like all three of them had. Tony cleared his throat.

“So are you going to tell me what the hell that was all that was about or?”

Nat picked up the duffel and slung it over her shoulder.

“Not on your life. Now I assume you have quarters prepared to my specifications and ready for my immediate occupancy.”

“Yeaaaahhh? I mean I have for months but if you had, you know, used one of these new fangled things called a telephone I could have had the pantry stocked and-”

“Telephones were patented in 1876. I might have used a rotary phone when I was poisoning Swiss nobility at the tender age of fourteen but I know how to use a cell phone. You can stop trying to be funny now.”

She wasn’t going to mention that she could also hack a cell phone and clone it, mainly his, for business purposes of course. Tony threw his arms up in defense.

“All you geriatrics are so sensitive about your ages I swear to god first Captain America, now Bucky. Who’s next Nick Fury turns out to really be an immortal werepanther?”

Natasha reached for the beretta hiding in her waistband behind her back and cocked it in front of her. Looked at it absently and then put it back in her waistband.

“Too soon Stark.”

Tony gulped but held his ground. He and the rest of the Avengers besides Steve, Sam, and Maria thought that Nick was still dead. Best to keep up appearances. She put her gun back where it had come from and then gestured towards the glass doors leading down into the building.

“Lead the way. I want a tour.”

Tony nodded stiffly and then launched into a mechanical spiel about what was on all the floors of the new Avengers tower. She listened keenly and scanned the layouts of every floor they passed until they finally arrived at the floor that belonged to her.

“Can I make this floor inaccessable by elevator without voice recognition approved by me?”

Tony waved his hand dismissively.

“Of course! What kind of technologically superior landlord do you think I am?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

He looked like he was seriously considering it when she cut him off.

“Thanks for the tour. I will give JARVIS an itemized list of my supplies and security protocols. Also which floors are Clint and The Patriots living on.”

Tony made an appreciative face at that and mumbled about having to use that one later. Before mentioning that Clint was out of town till Tuesday. And then he gave her directions to Steve’s floor. Which he wryly mentioned was where all three of them were living currently. She thanked him curtly and then promptly kicked him out.

She was expecting a lot of red and black decor because Stark had a shitty sense of humor but everything inside was sleek gray monochrome and black leather. All of the kitchen appliances were stainless steel, not that she cooked, and the swiveling track lighting gave the whole apartment a very low key feel. She probably had Pepper to thank for the design and she would repay her for it later.

There were three bedrooms all sparsely furnished and one of the rooms on the opposite hallways appeared to be an armory and command room equipped with multiple computers and monitors as well as wall to wall assault rifles, handguns, and uzi. Ever a couple flash grenades and tear gas cannisters here and there. Not too bad.

Tony had shown her the communal training room two floors up and one floor under Bucky’s. Even though he mentioned that Steve’s floor had it’s own gym because he used the gym as therapy instead of training. Just like Tony used building sentient A.I.s as therapy, oh and alcohol. Nat used killing bad guys as therapy. And Cherry Garcia Ben and Jerry’s.

There was also a shooting range but it was below ground level down with the chemistry labs for the same reasons. Explosions and ballistic accidents were something even Tony’s insurance was loathe to cover. She threw her bag down on the king sized bed in the master bedroom and didn’t bother unpacking it.

Nat had a mission to finish. Although she had a feeling that restoring Bucky’s memories would just be the start if she was in for the long haul.

There weren’t a lot of people in the world who could call her a friend but Bucky was one of them. Perhaps also a lover if she was lucky. But who knew what she would think of her when she remembered all the things they had done together while being agents in Russia.

Nat hadn’t known her the way that Steve had. Nat had known a silent, merciless assassin and loved her for it. But that apparently wasn’t Bucky, at least not all of her. That was just a risk Nat was willing to take. It was part of her atonement.

If she had the ability to make someone whole again she would do it. Would take that chance in a heart beat to make up for all the people she had destroyed over the years. Although to be fair most of them had deserved it. Bucky hadn’t deserved it.

Nat ascended in the elevator with a lump of bile in her throat. The last time she had seen Bucky she was definitely the Winter Soldier, shooting at her and trying to blow her to kingdom come with a grenade. What would she make of her now?

The doors dinged open and JARVIS’ British inflected voice announced her arrival. At first there appeared to be no one home but then Bucky stuck her head over the couch and stared at her blankly. When neither one of them moved she turned back to what she had been doing on the couch and Natasha let out a small relieved breath.

At least she hadn’t attacked her immediately. Careful to keep in Bucky’s line of sight she walked over to the couch and sat down on the arm closest to the door. Nat briefly looked around. All of the furniture had a softer more lived in feel than the ones in her apartment, like someone in suburbia's den. Though the walls were still white paint and glass. She turned back to Bucky and saw her scrolling something on a Stark Pad.

“Whatcha reading?”

Bucky stopped scrolling but didn’t look up at her.

“ Flowers for Algernon.”

That was a surprisingly appropriate choice, also extremely depressing.

“Wow. Did you up pick that out yourself?”

Bucky slammed the tablet down on her lap and the screen made a foreboding creaking noise before she let go of it and sighed. Her eyes were dark when she turned to look at Natasha.

“I may have had my brain put through a meat grinder, more than once, but I’m not stupid. Charlie is pretty relatable in a way that most people aren’t to me.”

With that Bucky slumped back against the couch and averted her eyes. When Natasha didn’t respond she continued.

“You’re not here to take me back are you? Because to that I would have to object...”

Her cybernetic hand crushed into a hard fist at that last part and Nat shook her head decisively no.

“No of course not. I’m not HYDRA or Russian for that matter. Do you know who I am?”

Bucky nodded faintly.

“Some. You’re Steve’s friend and an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. There’s more but it doesn’t make much sense. Is your name Natalia?”

Natasha smiled crookedly at that.

“Yes and no. I’m a former agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. but you’re right about the rest. Although Natalia is very formal. You can call me Natasha or Nat if you like. If not Natalia is fine.”

Bucky looked at her blankly and then mumbled.

“What does sobaka mean?”

The memory of their first meeting washed over her and she had to steady herself on the couch.

This was going to hurt.

“It’s Russian for dog dragotsenny.”

Bucky’s eyes fluttered shut at the term of endearment and she sighed.

“I knew you didn’t I? Like I knew Steve.”

Yes was probably the right response in more ways than one. But that kind of banter was for another time. Now they would get to the crux of the matter.

“Yes. Only I wasn’t like Steve I was like you. When HYDRA first made you they gave you to Mother Russia and I was her daughter as well. The Red Rooms gave you a muzzle and they gave me chains. I didn’t remember you. I was reprogrammed differently than you were and when HYDRA took you away I stayed in Russia as one of their assets for 30 years.”

Bucky’s eyes were huge as she swung forward to grasp Nat’s shoulders,pulling her down to sit on the couch in her crushing grip. Nat didn’t flinch away but instead met her fearful gaze. Bucky’s voice shook a little.

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll come back for you? Wipe you so you don’t even remember you were ever free? Never remember that you’re you?”

Nat grabbed the hands that were holding her tightly and squeezed her back reassuringly.

“Every day. I don’t even trust myself sometimes. But I am free and I am me and I will use all of my considerable skills to stay that way.”

Bucky’s hands dropped to Nat’s sides and she looked at her with faraway eyes.

“Teach me how solnyshko.”

Nat tenderly took her face in her hands and nodded.

“I will. I promise. But there is something else first. Do you want to remember? All of it. All of who and what you are. This is not a blessing I can assure you but I’m offering it nonetheless.”

Bucky clasped her hands that were on the sides of her face and nuzzled into them.

“Will I remember Steve? And you?”

“Yes. It will hurt more than any physical pain because memories like the ones we have do not leave. They wait, and watch, and when you are low they come for your throat.”

“It’s worth it. Do it”

Nat’s eyes went from light blue to liquid gold and then she was falling into the jagged maw of their shared past. Bucky opened h  
er mouth to scream but no sound came out. The singular comfort was that she would be with her in this together. Jen would have her there to lean on both as her savior and her tormenter. They would know the results of such a bond soon enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another piece of this fic is edited done and up woo! I would like to thank my beta [ sparksflyupward](http://sparksflyupward.tumblr.com/) for lugging through this massive fic. 
> 
> Also [feanorinleatherpants](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Feanor_in_leather_pants) who has made some amazing art for this fic and I'm just so honored.  
> View it [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1685501)  
> [ Here](http://feanorinleatherpants.tumblr.com/post/86734633945/chicagoartnerd-feanorinleatherpants)  
> and [ here](http://feanorinleatherpants.tumblr.com/post/86722936555/i-think-i-remember-my-name-natalia-wasnt)
> 
> And just a reminder for this chapter that dragotsenny means "precious one"and solnyshko is "little sun." I have a thing for pet names in other languages I'm not sorry. There will be more Russian in future chapters of dubious quality because I do not speak Russian and google translate can be wonky. I'm trying.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Wolf [ART for The Pain of Kindness]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1685501) by [Feanor_in_leather_pants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feanor_in_leather_pants/pseuds/Feanor_in_leather_pants)
  * [Solnyshko [ART for "The Pain of Kindness"]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1775065) by [Feanor_in_leather_pants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feanor_in_leather_pants/pseuds/Feanor_in_leather_pants)




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